Over 78% Appear For APSET

Results likely by January end

More than 78 per cent of those who have applied for the AP State Eligibility Test (APSET) have turned up for the examination, held on Sunday. The exam was conducted at 208 centres located in 12 regional centres across the State. According to Prof B Rajeswara Reddy, Member secretary of APSET, out of 1,26,411 candidates who have registered for the exam, 98,232 have appeared for exam.

APSET is mandatory for lectureship in colleges and universities in the state. Those who have qualified in the NET conducted by UGC need not take it. Both the government and private institutions consider APSET score while recruiting faculty.

Nalgonda district topped the attendance with 84 per cent; Guntur at the bottom with 73 per cent. Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam registered 75 per cent of attendance.

The exam, which was conducted in two sessions from 9.30 am to 12 noon and again from 2.30 pm to 5 pm, was held in 27 subjects. A total of 13 UGC observers and 16 APSET observers along with 208 local supervisors have monitored the exam, Prof Rajeswara Reddy informed.

“The three papers were set by a total of 12 experts each for each subject. Half of these examiners were from within Andhra Pradesh and the remaining half were from other states. No faculty member from Osmania University was assigned the job of paper setting” he revealed.

The results of APSET are likely by the end of January 2014, he added.

Earlier, Prof S Satyanarayana, Vice-Chancellor of Osmania University released the question paper code at his residence at 4.45 am in the morning.

According to some of the students, papers such as languages and humanities were rather easy compared to last year. As there was no negative marking this year, students and lecturers working in private colleges on ad hoc basis felt it somewhat easy. But experts who have gone through all the papers opined that the paper I was given tough, thereby making the chances of qualifying in other papers rather difficult.

The minimum marks to be obtained for qualifying the exam are: 40 per cent each in Paper I and II and 50 per cent for Paper III (75 marks) for students belonging to general category. For BCs, it would be 35 per cent each in first two papers and 45% in the third one. For SC, ST, PH candidates, it would be 35 per cent each for the first two and 40% for the third one.

But this alone will not suffice. Amongst those candidates who have got minimum qualifying marks, a merit list will be prepared subject-wise and category-wise using the aggregate marks of all the three papers secured by such candidates. And in the last step, the top 15 per cent candidates for each subject and category from the merit list will be declared qualified in APSET and they alone will be eligible for lectureship.