There was a time when passing intermediate/HSC (High School Certificate) with good grades could get you into a public university. Not any more. The standard of testing at HSC level is presumed to have fallen so low that not even public universities are accepting candidates on sole basis of passing HSC exams. The requirement of a separate entrance test in addition to passing HSC exams has now become a de-facto requirement by public universities in Pakistan.
In most universities, HSC grades still get some weightage when calculating the total acceptance criteria but a good grade in HSC alone is not sufficient.
My question is what is the purpose of spending so much time, money and effort on conducting HSC exams? Now a student has to do hardwork in HSC exams and once those exams are over, they have to prepare again for entrance exams to several universities they intend to apply. Don’t you think it is an added and unnecessary burden on students to pass all these extra entrance exams?
A counter argument can be made that if a student prepares for HSC exams in letter and spirit i.e. by understanding the concepts and not by ‘rattafication’ (memorizing) then he/she can pass any entrance exam. That is true and I agree with that argument. But then my counter argument would be to improve on testing method at HSC level. Make all HSC exams MCQ type where ‘rattafication’ will not help. Today the criteria of passing HSC exams is memorizing long descriptive answers, which do no help a candidate in any entrance exam.
The situation has now reached a point where there is a perception that those universities which do not conduct entrance test are below standard. Therefore 2nd or 3rd-tier public universities and colleges are also in the business of conducting their own Entrance exams because they don’t want to appear as having lower acceptance criteria.
For the past few years I’ve also noticed a trend of commercialization and politization of Entrance exams. Whole new institutions of private coaching have sprung up across Pakistan which guarantee you success in all kinds of entrance exams. I’ve also noticed the trend where student wings of notorious political parties conduct practise/mock exams for candidates to public universities. One reason that prompted me to write this post was that today I even saw a statement from a political leader where he has demanded to standardize the university entrance exams all over Pakistan. Good demand, but my point is why don’t we reform the insitution of HSC boards and exams instead of creating more and more roadblocks for students.
Below I want to summarize few arguments for and against Entrance Test to the public universities.
Arguments For Entry Exams to Universities:
1. HSC exams and their marking criteria are not consistent across the country. HSC results differ by huge margin from board to board and region to region.
2. HSC exams are prone to corruption and cheating.
3. HSC exams test a person’s memory and not concepts. e.g. descriptive questions on which marking is also qualitative (read as “depends on the mood of an examiner”) and not quantitative.
4. Centralized exams are a worldwide norm e.g. SAT, GRE, GMAT etc scores have weightage when admission is sought to Universities in the Western Hemisphere.
5. If a student goes through HSC curriculum by learning concepts then he/she should be able to pass all entry exams with minimum effort.
Arguments Against Entry Exams to Universities:
1. It renders the whole institution of Intermediate (HSC) boards country-wide useless and meaningless. I would even go as far as saying that it is like wasting 2 years of students.
2. Monetary burden on students who pay examination fees at HSC boards and then for individual entry exams at universities. Conducting entrance exams has almost become means for extra income for the universities.
3. Psychological burden on students. At first the students have to do two years of hard study at HSC level only to know before hand that it alone won’t be enough to get them into a university.
I concede that my arguments against entrance Exams are lesser in number than those which are for entrance exams. But I believe my ‘against’ arguments have more weight. If I were a student going thorugh two years of rigorous HSC Studies, I want that exercise to be worthy enough to atleast get me to next level of education.
I would be willing to prepare for a different (reformed) type of HSC testing where my concepts are tested and not my memory. I will be happily going through this 2 year of hardwork, if I know it is worth something.
The photo above shows a self assessment test being conducted by a student wing of a political party in Hyderabad. This is for preparing students for the entrance test to Sindh University, Jamshoro.
To conclude this post I want to say that in my opinion HSC boards and their exams should be reformed so that their results are worthy of admissions to public universities. Entry exams conducted by public universities on their own should be abolished.
What do you think?
Photo Credits: Associated Press of Pakistan
I have never been a gifted student, so after working my ass off to do my graduation I applied to a “prestigious” university only to find they conduct entry tests which is supposed to be 10 times harder than my grad. exams. So on a friends advice I joined this institute where they “prepare” you for entry tests. The first day I quickly got intimidated by all those freaks who already have memorized more than 3000 words from English language.
I mean is that really productive for a young student?
I was a student of O’Levels and i was able to get a fairly decent result. 6As and 3Bs a cumulative percentage of 91.3 % which was reduced to 81.3% by IBCC when i decided to switch to Intermediate, as in the local board. My result was about 73% meaning that i could never get into a good engineering university which prepares its merit list from HSC results only. However, i was fortunate enough to get into NUST (National University of Sciences and Technology), one of the best universities in Pakistan since they had an entrance exam system. I currently have a GPA of 3.6.
My point being, my results before and after Intermediate were pretty satisfactory. Just the small phase of pointless paper patterns and idiotic system of marking by the Board of Intermediate Education, Karachi, could very well have ruined my life. And this is not just the case with me. It is the story of hundreds of other people. So, those of you who talk of abolishing entrance exams should consider the “credibility” of our Board first.
Having tests on the pattern of SAT and GRE won’t help much either in my openion because there is very little that can be done to prevent cheating. I am in favor of entrance exams being conducted and given due weightage accordingly.
Either remove or improve the system.
I am completely in favor of the entry tests at least until the HSC exams are revamped in a revolutionary manner. The marks students get out of these exams aren’t indicative of the faculty of the students in the subjects they were examined in. This question is also tied to yet another important question of the curriculum. The books we study are not very optimized for the task they are designed to achieve: learning. What we learn from these books are trivialities and the important concepts are either absent or so much confusing that their purpose is not served. I know its the task of educationists to figure out these things but how many internationally acclaimed educationists do we have?
In the end it turns out to be a classical case of “neem hakim khatra e jaaN”.
Sad to say that but it is a fact that our educational system is highly flawed and encourages memorizing instead of understanding the concepts. Most of us have gone through this system and so I believe that there should be some aptitude test criterion for the admission. FSc marks should be for the eligibility only….