Rush of candidates for common medical course admission test

PTI


New Delhi, Oct 5:  More than 38,000 candidates have got themselves registered within the first 24 hours of online registration for the common entrance test for admission to all post-graduate courses in medical colleges across the country from academic year 2013-14.

The National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test for postgraduate (NEET-PG) courses, applicable for admission to 20,000 PG medical seats in 350 medical colleges, is being held between November 23 and December 6 this year.

The first computer-based NEET-PG test, being conducted by National Board of Examinations (NBE), will be held at selected test centres across 33 cities.

The rush witnessed on the first day of opening of online registration brought about technical glitches as candidates complained of not being able to log on to the website.

While candidates complained of the website ‘crashing’ for a few hours during registration yesterday, NBE officials claimed there was no crash of their website.

“Some users may have experienced problem as candidates across the country tried to login at the same time... There were also 120 attempts to hack the website and we had to activate many fireballs,” NBE director Bipin Batra told PTI.

Denying any website crash, Prometric, which was appointed by NBE early this year to conduct the computer-based NEET-PG, said glitches could have taken place due to the heavy rush.

“Within the first 24 hours of online registration, over 38,000 candidates have successfully registered for NEET-PG, which translates to 1,600 transactions per hour,” Soumitra Roy, Prometric India MD said.

While the NEET-PG covers all medical colleges, the three national institutes of AIIMS, PGI Chandigarh and JIPMER, which have been set up by acts of Parliament, will not be covered.

The registration and scheduling for the exam, which began on October 4, will remain open until November 12, while voucher sales are available from October 4-10.

NBE officials said they are expecting around 90,000 to one lakh candidates to take this exam and feared that coaching centres may have created the panic situation.

“We have also created contingency seats at various centres across the country and the exam will be conducted in secure and controlled labs not connected to internet,” Batra said.

“Some waiting time can be expected depending on the candidates’ internet connection speed and the number of candidates accessing the registration system. We will endeavour to offer as many seats as feasible in candidates’ preferred locations, availability is on a first-come first-served basis,” said Roy.