Over 20,000 appear for MHT-CET in city

NAGPUR: The Maharashtra Health and Technology Common Entrance Examination (MHT-CET) was conducted smoothly across 867 centres in the state on Thursday. In city, it was conducted at 51 centres where over 20,000 candidates appeared. Last year 17,721 had appeared from city. This year while the city saw around 3,000 more students appearing for the exam, the number increased by 35,000 all over the state.
Exam coordinator for the city SM Parate said, "Out of 51 centres, 26 were for physics, chemistry, maths and biology (MB) candidates, five for physics, chemistry and biology (BB) and 20 for the physics, chemistry and maths (MM) candidates."
"The students found physics and chemistry to be very time consuming. Out of 50, around 40 questions were numerical, thus, a lot of time went into calculation. According to the students, extra 10 minutes would have made a huge difference," said Sameer Phale, biology lecturer at Dr Ambedkar College. On the other hand, they found biology and maths be very easy. The interesting part is that most of the questions were directly asked from the state board books, he added.
"I found mathematics tough. I have more interest in physics and chemistry, so the questions were easy for me to solve. More emphasis had been given on 11th standard syllabus. In all, the paper was fine," said Amitoj Bhandari, another student who appeared for the exam. Another candidate Abhinandan Chandra, added, "Students who have studied under CBSE board find this exam pretty easy. Physics was a bit troubling but maths was the best."
A BB candidate, Aaena Chaudhary, informed, "Biology was great. It was very easy to solve. For that matter, even physics and chemistry were not that bad either. It was lengthy and time consuming but thankfully there were no mistakes in the question paper."
According to the students, the exam was not tough but it was not easy either. "Everyone was finding it to be easy, but I had trouble in solving physics and maths. They took a lot of time and thus, I fell short of time while solving chemistry. It surely was not easy," said Harbir Singh.
As per the candidates, on one hand, certain parts of the exam were easy to solve but on the other, physics posed many a hurdle for the students. Solving the numerical questions ate up a lot of time. So, they had to compromise with chemistry. Overall, most of the students are fully satisfied and are now, eagerly awaiting their results.
The Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER) holds MHT-CET, which attracts over three lakh engineering, medical and pharmacy degree aspirants from Maharashtra and other states annually. Over 1.27 lakh engineering seats, 7,000 medical and 8,345 pharmacy seats are up for grabs.