Several students who showed up for the 2022 Common University Entrance Test Postgraduate (CUET-PG) claimed that the answers to many of the questions in the final answer key published by the National Testing Agency were wrong.
Inquiries and emails to the examination office for corrections went unanswered, the students said.
For example, students pointed out that the answer to the question “Salman Rushdie won the 1993 Booker of Bookers Prize for:” is labeled “The Satanic Verses” instead of “Midnight’s Children.”
Even though Mahesh Dattani is the first playwright to receive the Sahitya Akademi award, he is declared wrong in the final answer key.
In another answer, “wherewithal” is written as “wherewital”.
An online petition to this effect has already collected over 386 signatures in four days.
IE tried unsuccessfully to contact the NTA.
Aarushi Srivastava, one of the candidates who appeared for CUET-PG, has been preparing to study psychology at Banaras Hindu University for more than six months. However, 10 points were deducted due to the supposed wrong answers. She scored 270 out of 400 on the psychology paper and said she was “doubtful” about securing admission to BHU.
In Part A of the Psychology paper, Srivastava claimed that one of the questions was to identify which part of the idiom “wearing” belongs to in the sentence “restless lies the head that wears the crown.” The possible answers included “noun”, “adjective”, “preposition” and “verb”.
“The preliminary answer key said the correct answer is ‘verb,’ but the final key said it was ‘preposition,'” Srivastava said. “These two answers resulted in a loss of 10 points for me, since each correct answer is awarded 4 points and an incorrect answer is deducted one point.”
She called the situation “deplorable”. “There is no one listening to us, no one raising our issue and our emails to the NTA went unanswered. I’ve prepared for six months and now I feel betrayed,” she said.
Meezan Anjum, who performed for English and Sociology, received 210 out of 300 points in Sociology. He planned to study at either Jawaharlal Nehru University or Hyderabad Central University. “The NTA was unable to administer an exam that autonomous colleges routinely conduct. If they weren’t prepared, they should have waited a year,” Anjum said.
The CUET-PG 2022, which was carried out for the first time, was voluntary for the colleges and universities participating this year. Over 66 universities including 27 central universities participated, which attracted over 3,34,997 students.
On September 26, the day the exam results were announced, University Grants Commission Chair M Jagadesh Kumar said admissions are based on “raw grades” rather than NTA scores.
Another student, who wished to remain anonymous, said that NTA released the results of the exam just two days after the revised answer key was released.
“This left the students with little time and finding an adequate solution to this problem is incredibly difficult. Despite widespread complaints, the NTA has refused to correct the errors in the final answer key,” the student said in an email to DH. “The lack of time before the results are published means that this issue needs immediate attention.”
