KARACHI, Sept 11: As many as 8,710 students would take the test for admission to first year MBBS and BDS classes in the medical colleges and university of the province on September 14.

The entry tests will be conducted by the Bahria University through its management and computer science institute of Karachi at three centres simultaneously. The test would start at 10am and the candidates have been advised to report to their respective centres at 9am.

The director of the Bahria Institute of Management and Computer Science, Captain Ahmed Zaheer, told Dawn that Vice-Admiral Fayyazur Rehman, the rector of the BU, was supervising the entire process of entry tests and had come to Karachi specially for the purpose.

He said there was an increase of about 1100 candidates this year. Last year 7600 candidates appeared for the test, while 8710 have been registered this year.

In all, there are 923 merit seats for admission to MBBS and BDS classes at five government-run medical colleges and one university. A total of 292 seats, including 236 merit seats, have been allocated for MBBS admission to the Dow Medical College Karachi, and 231 seats, including 176 merit seats, have been allocated for Sindh Medical College Karachi.

The breakdown of MBBS seats being offered for admission to other institutions of the province for the year 2003-2004 is: Liaquat University of Medical and health Science Hyderabad-280, including 227 merit seats, Chandka Medical College MAK/MBT-SE11 Larkana-124 (83 merit), Peoples Medical College Nawabshah-130 (92 merit) and Sukkur Medical College Sukkur-83 (73 merit).

According to Captain Zaheer, an increase of 100 candidates has been recorded at the Karachi Centre with respect to last year, while a substantial increase of about 700 candidates is noted at the Hyderabad centre. In the case of the Larkana centres the increase in candidates is by 300.

The centre-wise breakdown of the candidates registered for entry test for the year 2003-2004 is: Hyderabad-3248, Karachi-2902 and Larkana-2560.

The test will be conducted at three centres, namely PNS Bahadur, Stadium Road, Karachi, Public School, Latifabad NO 2, Hyderabad, and Police Training School, Larkana.