Bengaluru: From next year, the Common Entrance Test (CET) application process is likely to be integrated with II PU examination application process, preventing students from submitting multiple CET applications in the same year.As per discussions between Karnataka School Examination and Assessment Board (KSEAB), that holds II PU exam, and Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA), which is in charge of CET, a single application can be developed for science students in the state board.The move is not just to help students from making multiple applications, but also to prevent them from making errors during filing them.“When the application form for II PU exam is filled, the college takes responsibility. But during CET, no one helps students. They either end up filling it with mistakes or go to a cyber centre where they have to pay people to assist them in completing it. With a single application, this is ruled out,” said H Prasanna, executive director, KEA.“This year, around 11,000 students have made mistakes in filling CET form. We had to create over 8,000 spot ranks as these students could not be given ranks in the initial list as their PU marks were not fetched. This was due to the mistakes they made in filing application, including their PU register number. The students ended up approaching us for a spot rank. A single application form will help us release results faster too,” he said.Around 85% of CET applications are from PU students; the remaining are from other boards like Central Board of Secondary Education and Council for Indian School Certificate Examination. Students from other boards and repeaters will have to make a separate application for CET.“The plan is that when a PU student applies for CET, all he needs to do is to log in to KEA website and make the payment,” he added. “These are all govt departments. Data transfer won’t be an issue,” he said.The amount of details that both exams entail are almost the same. CET requires some more information like Kannada medium, rural or urban, reservations, linguistic or religious minority, among others. These can be fetched as well from the PU application. Meanwhile, the departments are also discussing the scope of fetching these details during the I PU admissions.II PU application is made in Aug, while that of CET is done during Nov.“We are discussing how we can incorporate the rest of the details too and make a single application possible,” said Prakash GT Nittali, chairman, KSEAB.
