CUET exam may or may not be difficult, but why?
Before we delve deeper into the question of whether CUET exam is difficult or not, we must understand the factors that make an exam difficult. An exam is labelled difficult depending on:
- The number of people who write the exam
- The inherent difficulty level of the questions that are asked in the exam
- The cutoffs required by the colleges that accept scores of that exam
Depending on the above three factors, we categorize the difficulty level of an exam. Coming to CUET, we see that it is written by more than 20 lakhs students, and these numbers are likely to increase in the future as more and more state and private universities start accepting CUET scores for admissions into their undergraduate courses.
Right now, primarily the central universities and state universities in the northern part of India are accepting CUET scores. But it is projected that soon almost all state universities will start accepting CUET scores, and if that becomes a reality, then CUET exam will be written by more than 50 lakhs students across the country, making it one of the most competitive exams.
What about difficulty level of the questions that come in CUET exam?
For the time being the difficulty level of CUET is low. But this has resulted in very high cutoffs for top colleges such as SRCC, Miranda House and St. Stephens, where the cutoffs are 100 percentile.
When the cutoffs are very high, even a silly error in the question paper results in throwing a student out of the race.
For instance, almost 8000 students have scored full marks in the English section. If someone makes silly mistake, then that student not only loses the positive marks allotted for that question, but also attracts penalty in the form of one negative. This one mistake is likely to push the rank of that student by thousands.
In short, though the difficulty level of the exam is low, one must still practice a lot so that one gets used to the paper pattern and score maximum marks.
Difficulty levels are likely to change in future:
Just because the CUET exam was easy last year does not mean that it would be easy this year as well. Though the difficulty level of the paper overall might be on the lower side, certain sections like GK, English and Reasoning might become difficult.
In fact, in CUET 2022, while many students found the English section to be easy, there were many who found the general test section a little on the difficult side because of the questions that came from current affairs and reasoning. So, the paper was not as easy as it was perceived to be.
Moreover, the domain section papers were not easy at all. Tricky conceptual questions were seen in the accounts and economics domain papers.
In CUET exam, hope for the best but prepare for the worst:
Most Indian exams are inconsistent with respect to their pattern and difficulty. CUET is going to be no different exam in this respect. If we prepare thinking that the exam last year was cakewalk, then this might result in under preparation or no preparation at all.
This could be a fatal mistake because being a timed MCQ based exam, CUET is all about speed and accuracy. The greater the speed the higher the chance of doing well in the exam. You cannot get speed just be thinking that the exam is going to be easy.
To get the best speed you must practice hard, write many mock tests and work on all the weak areas. This need patience, hard work and guidance.
