Candidates who attempted out-of-syllabus and ambiguous questions in the Medical and Dental College Admission Test (MDCAT) will receive marks for them, Special Assistant to Prime Minister (SAPM) on Health, Dr. Faisal Sultan, has revealed.
In a video message, Dr. Faisal said that Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC), in collaboration with Quaid-e-Azam University (QAU), will hold a transparent post-exam analysis on a scientific basis to conduct a transparent investigation of the MDCAT to address the concerns of all candidates.
The SAPM on Health had requested the PMC President, Dr. Arshad Taqi, to take QAU on board for conducting a scientific analysis of MDCAT to reward students for attempting out-of-syllabus and ambiguous questions.
In this regard, Dr. Arshad has already directed PMC to engage with QAU analysts to initiate the analysis and compile its findings in a report at the earliest. President PMC, Dr. Arshad Taqi, and Vice-Chancellor (VC) QAU, Dr. Mohammad Ali, will jointly review the analysis before announcing its result on 9 October.
Controversy
SOAR Testing and Evaluation Platform Limited held the computer-based MDCAT exam from 30 August to 30 September. The exam was held under PMC’s Conduct of Examinations Regulations (CER) 2021.
Around 200,000 candidates appeared in this year’s MDCAT exam that was held over the course of a month. Following the conclusion of the month-long MDCAT exam, students started protesting against PMC across the country.
The students alleged that the MDCAT exam contained out-of-syllabus and ambiguous questions. They also claimed that the testing company responsible for holding the computer-based MDCAT exam provided faulty devices with poor internet services for the exam.
They said that conducting MDCAT on multiple days gave an unfair advantage to some students who had more time to revise than others, adding that some candidates got easy question papers and some difficult ones due to different editions of the MDCAT exam.
Calling for a retake of the MDCAT exam on a single day, protesting students argued that if India can conduct the MDCAT exam of more than 1.8 million students on a single day, why PMC can’t hold the MDCAT exam of around 200,000 students on a single day?
