Conducted online since its introduction two years ago, the Common University Entrance Test-Undergraduate (CUET UG) will now be held in a hybrid mode to allow candidates, particularly those from rural areas, to take the exam closer home, The Indian Express has learnt.

Registration for the examination, conducted by the National Testing Agency (NTA) on behalf of the UGC, will likely begin around February 19, it is learnt.

According to senior officials in NTA and UGC, the third edition of the exam, scheduled to be held between May 15 and 31, will see some major changes — from the format to number of subjects allowed to the difficulty level.

UGC chairman M Jagadesh Kumar said that for subjects with higher registration, the test will be conducted using OMR sheets instead of the Computer Based Test (CBT) format.

The NTA is also working on ensuring the difficulty level of the CUET UG 2024 is kept as moderate to avoid stress among students, Kumar said.

“For the subjects where there will be a higher percentage of registrations, we will bring in OMR (in multiple choice question format). In this way, we will be able to conduct the exam for those specific subjects on one day and in one shift for all candidates in the country. We will be able to use several schools, colleges and educational institutes as exam halls, just like we do for other exams such as NEET. “This will be benefit students, specifically those who are in rural areas, as they will not have to travel to far-off places for the exam,” he said.

Last year, around 28 lakh candidates sat for CUET UG, with the highest number of applications received from Uttar Pradesh.

The exam will be conducted in three shifts on each exam day: 9 am to 11 am, 12.30 pm to 2 pm, and 4 pm to 5.30 pm. According to Kumar, the hybrid format will reduce the number of “exam days” as well. When asked if this will bring down the possibility of the usage of the normalisation process for result calculation, Kumar said a decision on this will be taken as the situation arises.

Number of subjects a candidate can choose will be cut from 10 to six. According to Kumar, data by NTA showed not many students were picking all the 10 subject options. The large large number of options was also posing technical difficulties in allotting exam centres for some students.

“Since few students were picking the large number of choices, allotment of centres became very complex. Since our data shows that most students were only taking 4 or 5 papers, in this CUET UG, we will permit students to take only 6 test papers, which would include three domain subjects, two languages and the general test,” Kumar said.

The NTA is also working on ensuring the difficulty level of the CUET UG 2024 is kept as moderate to avoid stress among students, Kumar said.