Incorrect answer keys to CUET-PG 2022 dash students’ dreams of choice colleges

Several students, who appeared for the Common University Entrance Test Postgraduate (CUET-PG) 2022, alleged that answers to many of the questions in the final answer key released by the National Testing Agency were incorrect.

Requests and emails to the exam agency to have them corrected remained unanswered, said the students.

For instance, students pointed out, the answer to the question, “Salman Rushdie won the Booker of Bookers Prize in 1993 for:” is marked as “The Satanic Verses”, instead of “Midnight’s Children”.

Similarly, while Mahesh Dattani is the first playwright to receive the Sahitya Akademi award, it is declared incorrect in the final answer key.

In another answer, “wherewithal” is spelt as “wherewital”.

An online petition regarding this has already garnered over 386 signatures in four days.

DH attempted to contact the NTA without any success.

Aarushi Srivastava, one of the candidates who appeared for CUET-PG, has been preparing for more than six months to study psychology in Banaras Hindu University. However, because of the supposed incorrect answers, 10 marks have been deducted. She scored 270 out of 400 in the psychology paper, and said she was “doubtful” about securing an admission at BHU.

In Part A of the psychology paper, Srivastava claimed, one of the questions was to identify what part of speech does “wear” belong to in the sentence “Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown”. The choices of answers included “noun”, “adjective”, “preposition”, and “verb”.

“The provisional answer key said that the right answer is ‘verb’ but the final key said it is ‘preposition’,” said Srivastava. “These two answers have led to a loss of 10 marks for me, since every correct answer is awarded 4 marks, and a mark is deducted if the answer is incorrect.”

She called the situation “pitiable”. “There is no one to listen to us, no one to raise our issue, and our emails to the NTA remained unanswered. I prepared for six months and I now feel cheated,” she said.

Meezan Anjum, who appeared for English and Sociology, secured 210 out of 300 marks in Sociology. He planned to get into either Jawaharlal Nehru University or Hyderabad Central University. “The NTA has not been able to manage an exam that autonomous colleges conduct routinely. If they were not prepared, they should have waited a year,” Anjum said.

Conducted for the first time, CUET-PG 2022 was voluntary for the colleges and universities that participated this year. Over 66 universities, including 27 central universities, participated where over 3,34,997 students appeared.

On September 26, the day the results for the exam were announced, University Grants Commission chairperson M Jagadesh Kumar said that admissions will take place on the basis of ‘raw marks’, and not NTA scores.

Another student, who wished to remain anonymous, said that NTA released the results of the examination just two days after the release of the revised answer key.

“This left students with little time and it is incredibly difficult to seek a proper solution to this problem. Despite widespread grievances, NTA has refused to correct the errors in the final answer key,” the student said in an email to DH. “The lack of time before the release of the results necessitates that this issue is given immediate attention.”