The CUET-PG 2024 saw a significant improvement in the attendance with 75% of the registered students taking the exam, compared to 61.5% last year. According to the result announced by National Testing Agency (NTA) Friday, a total of 5.7 lakh students of the 7.6 lakh who had registered took the test. Female participation among those who appeared was higher with 3.15 lakh compared to men at 2.6 lakh. Last year, 8.7 lakh students registered for the exam and of them 5.3 lakh students wrote it. According to NTA, the jump in attendance is due to allotment of centres close to the applicant's permanent or present address. “.it is evident the attendance percentage has considerably increased this year because candidates were allotted exam city near their present or permanent address, and the examination calendar mentioning the dates for CUET (PG) – 2024 were announced in advance,” an official statement said. In 2022, when CUET-PG was conducted for the first time, 3.3 lakh students took the national-level entrance test while 6 lakh had registered, which translated to an attendance of 55%. A total of 4.6 lakh unique students registered for the test in 2024 this year. The test was held in 572 centres across 262 cities, including in nine cities outside India (Manama, Dubai, Kathmandu, Muscat, Riyadh, Ottawa, Abu Dhabi, Vienna, and Qatar) While there was an improvement in attendance, the total number of participating universities this year dropped to 190 from last year’s 197. Last year, 45 state public universities took admissions based on CUET-PG scores, however, in 2024, only 39 such universities will do so. Also, 15 government institutions and 97 private and deemed universities will admit students for PG programmes based on CUET PG scores.
