No negative marking in Odisha joint entrance examination

There will be no negative marking in Odisha joint entrance examination (OJEE) this year, government authorities said. The test for admission into various undergraduate and post graduate courses in the state is scheduled on May 12.

"The government decided to do away with negative marks as students getting less than zero also got admission, the previous year. A large number of seats are still vacant," secretary technical education and training Chandra Sekhar Kumar said here on Monday. Four wrong answers fetched one negative mark in the OJEE.

Official sources said the questions will be evaluated under a percentile system. However, those leaving their OMR (optical mark recognition) answer-sheets blank will stand disqualified. Besides, the government has decided to make the application filling up process completely online.

In another related development, the government has decided to offer integrated and dual degree in engineering and management courses from the coming academic session. Students can directly take admission in courses such and BTech and MBA or BTech and MTech.

The scrutiny committee of employment and technical education department has recently decided that Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT) will inspect infrastructure of colleges interested in offering dual degrees. The varsity can allow allowing such colleges to run such dual degree courses after the colleges obtain no objection certificates from the government. BPUT will develop syllabi for the integrated courses and students would be drawn through the OJEE.

OJEE Exam Date : May 12, 2013

Odisha Joint Entrance Examination on May 12

The Odisha Joint Entrance Examination (OJEE) for admission into various undergraduate and postgraduate professional courses in the state will be held on May 12.

The state policy planning board, the apex body to take decision on admission matters in technical institutions, decided the date on Saturday. "Except for medical courses, the entrance test will be held as usual for other professional courses," OJEE secretary Priybrata Sahu told reporters. The OJEE was held on May 6 last year.

The entrance will screen students for admission into engineering, pharmacy, MBA, MCA, among other streams. Sahu said the details of application procedures and dates of application, fees, centres, examination pattern and syllabi will be notified shortly.

"We would like to start application procedures early so that maximum students from the state and outside are able to apply," Sahu said. The government is trying to attract maximum students for the entrance as thousands of engineering seats have been falling vacant for past three to four years. There was no admission for around 26,000 engineering seats in 2011.

It will be for the first time that medical entrance will not be part of OJEE as seats in state medical colleges will be filled through the maiden national eligibility cum entrance test (NEET 2013), the over-arching pre-medical entrance replacing state level examinations.

The OJEE authorities' announcement comes on the same day as the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) declaration to hold NEET on May 5 across the country. Application process for NEET started on Saturday.

Odisha Private Engineering College Association has welcomed the early announcement of OJEE date. In previous years, government used to announce OJEE dates in January-February by when dates of similar entrance tests in neighbouring states were already out. This reduced prospective candidates for Odisha test in absence of enough time to publicize. Because of early announcement, we hope for a very good response this year, said OPECA honorary secretary Binod Dash.

The OJEE authorities had started selling forms for last year entrance from February 10. This year, the same is likely to start in early January. Entrance fee is likely to remain unchanged at Rs 550.