CUET-UG: First phase of India's second biggest entrance exam starts today

The first phase of CUET-UG 2022 will be conducted on July 15, 16, 19, and 20

The first phase of the debut edition of India's second biggest entrance exam, Common University Entrance Test-Undergraduate (CUET-UG) 2022, for admissions to undergraduate courses at universities, starts Friday, July 15. 

The CUET-UG is being held in two phases, as the first phase will be held on July 15, 16, 19, and 20.

At 1.4 million registrations, CUET became the second biggest entrance exam in the country, surpassing JEE (Mains), which has an average of 900,000. JEE (Mains) picks students for technical undergraduate courses.

NEET(UG), which selects students for undergraduate medical courses, is India's biggest entrance exam, with an average of 1.8 million registrations each year. 

"The CUET (UG) 2022 has been scheduled for approximately 14,90,000 candidates, with around 810,000 candidates in the first slot and 680,000 candidates in the second. These candidates have applied for 54,555 unique combination of subjects across 90 universities," UGC Chairman Jagadesh Kumar said.

A total of 44 central universities, 12 state universities, 11 deemed universities, and 19 private universities have applied to participate in the first edition of CUET for UG admissions in the 2022-23 academic session.

In March this year, Kumar announced that CUET scores, not Class 12 marks, would be required for admission to 45 central universities across the nation. 

The CUET paper will be divided into three sections; the first section will be for language proficiency, section II for topic knowledge, and the third for general knowledge. The exam will have a negative marking, which means for each wrong answer, one mark will be deducted. There is no penalty for not attempting questions. 

The exam will be conducted in two shifts: the morning shift will be held from 9 am to 12.15 pm and the evening from 3 pm to 6.45 pm.