All arrangements completed for MDCAT

Around 40,000 students to appear in the exams; health minister lauds arrangements of all provinces, G-B and AJK

ISLAMABAD:

 

Minister of National Health Services (NHS) Abdul Qadir Patel on Friday said that all arrangements have been completed ahead of the Medical and Dental Colleges Admission Test (MDCAT) scheduled to be held on November 13 (today).

The minister said that the test, which has already been delayed for two months due to the recent devastating floods, will be held on the date as decided and added that around 40,000 students will be appearing in the tests.

He lauded the efforts made by police and law enforcement agencies of all four provinces, as well as Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, and Islamabad to ensure security arrangements for the examinations.

Keeping in view accountability, transparency and merit, the public sector medical universities of the provinces will conduct the test this year.

The federal health minister said that Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Medical University (SZABMU) will be conducting the entrance test for students of AJK and G-B.

This year, he continued, 21188 candidates are appearing in the exam from Islamabad, including 14656 female students and 6532 male students.

Similarly, 18 educational institutions of the Federal Directorate of Education, including Barani Agricultural University and Allama Iqbal Open University, have been nominated as examination centres for them.

The minister said that since there was a significant number of foreign students in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, the exam for them will be conducted there on the same day and time.

Meanwhile, in Punjab, the University of Health Sciences (UHS) will conduct the MDCAT exam in 25 centres set up in eight cities of the province. More than 83,000 candidates will appear in the test.

The MDCAT will be held today across the country at the same time, and all medical universities of Sindh, Islamabad and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa have agreed that the syllabus will remain the same as the one available on the Pakistan Medical Commission’s (PMC) website.

Earlier, the Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC) decided that the Bolan University of Medical and Health Sciences (Balochistan), the University of Health Sciences Lahore, the Khyber Medical University, Peshawar, the Dow University of Health Sciences, Karachi and the Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto Medical University, Islamabad, will conduct the MDCAT.

It was decided that the pass percentage of MBBS will be 55 per cent and BDS will be 45 per cent. The council relaxed the pass percentage to help adjust students in Pakistani medical dental colleges as last year, almost 20,000 students went abroad to get admissions to foreign medical dental colleges which resulted in a huge financial loss for Pakistan.