The NEET will compound the woes of Intermediate BiPC students seeking admission into dental, agriculture, veterinary, home science, pharmacy and biotechnology courses. Since NEET deals with only MBBS admissions, biology students will have to appear for separate tests for admissions into these professional courses. These students have to appear only for the Eamcet medical entrance exam for admissions into these courses now. But if NEET replaces Eamcet, the biology students will have to appear for both the tests if they want admission to courses other than MBBS. Also, a short span of five months is left for preparation of both NEET and Eamcet, which has variations in their syllabi.
While about 70,000 students appear for Eamcet, there are just 4,800 MBBS seats available in the State. Students therefore used to opt for dental courses later in the Eamcet counselling. After MBBS and BDS seats are filled, students usually opt for veterinary or agriculture courses offered by the Acharya NG Ranga Agriculture University. There are about 1,830 dental seats in 21 medical colleges, besides the 270 seats in veterinary courses and 500 seats in agriculture courses.
All these issues need to be addressed before implementing NEET. “We have submitted a report explaining the pros and cons of NEET. It’s up to the government to take a final decision. The government has clarified that it will seek time till 2013 to implement NEET,” said Prof Jayaprakash Rao, chairman, AP State Council of Higher Education.
Source : DC