Protest held against MDCAT outside Dow University

Students demand grace marks in lieu of 30 ‘out-of-syllabus questions’

KARACHI:

A large number of students on Thursday protested against the National Medical and Dental College Admission Test (MDCAT) conducted by the Dow University of Health and Sciences (DUHS) on behalf of the Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC).

The PMC has conducted MDCAT-2022 on November 13 across the country except for Sindh where it directed DUHS to conduct the test on its behalf. This year’s MDCAT had 200 multiple-choice questions from the subjects of biology, chemistry, physics, and English. However, students claimed that 30 questions were out of the syllabus.

“We asked the Vice-Chancellor of Dow University to provide grace marks to the students against these 30 questions, but he refused,” one student said. For this reason, they staged a sit-in outside the main gate of the university next to the Civil Hospital.

They demanded that the post-examination analysis should be conducted by a third party or an impartial university as had been done in MDCAT 2021. If the questions are found to be out of the syllabus, then grace marks should be given to the affected students.

They further demanded that the question paper and keys should be published on the official website of DUHC or PMC. The admission process should be stopped until all issues are resolved.

Another protester said: “Our future is at stake. The university management is not willing to even talk on the irregularities in MDCAT-2022 as many questions were out of the syllabus. Who will compensate for the damage caused by PMC’s negligence?”

The head of the MQM restoration committee, Dr. Farooq Sattar, who was also present at the sit-in, said that the youth of Sindh have been treated unjustly for years. He said that the future of youth was being destroyed in the name of MDCAT.

Sattar said that the PMC, DUHS, federal and provincial governments have no time to spare for the problems of students. He threw full weight behind the demand of the students and warned that if these are not met, then the protesters will launch an organized protest.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 25^th, 2022.