THE National Testing Service (NTS) is a premier testing institute in Pakistan. It is conducting a wide range of tests like recruitment tests, college/university admission tests and various local, overseas scholarship and GAT tests.

The NTS has been doing an exceptional work, with great fairness and transparency, in testing since its inception.

Despite all this, its test composition, particularly that of GAT and scholarship test, is still quite an arguable matter.

These tests generally comprise three main sections: verbal, quantitative and analytical.

Verbal and quantitative sections are very much in compliance with international standards but the analytical section is somewhat out of this world.

Analytical tests are used worldwide as a tool to assess the candidate’s ability of decision-making and analysing information for comprehension.

Instead, in GAT (analytical section) it bewilders the candidates with wordiest and mind - boggling details and questions, while worse of all is that it must be attempted in a limited time span, like 40 questions in an hour or even less.

Ultimately, it results in wild guesses and consequently wrong answers that lead to failure in the test. In other words, the analytical section is designed to discourage candidates from achieving the desired scores or even stop them from passing the tests.

There are limited scholarships offered in Pakistan for higher studies (MPhil and PhD) and even fewer to study abroad. These scholarships are the only hope for talented middle class and poor students to study at higher levels. But if these tests continue to spoil the career of the talented youth due to the poorly designed or deficient testing system, it will compound the misery of students in a country like Pakistan where scholarships are already meagre.

It has been observed that fewer scholarships have been availed as compared to scholarships offered in the last few years and this is due to faulty test system.

I request the NTS administration to revise its criterion for GAT and scholarship tests to make them attemptable at least, if not simple.

The HEC must monitor the tests taken by the NTS. By doing so, some good number of candidates can qualify these tests and can avail themselves of scholarships. It also can be a way of promoting higher education in Pakistan.

JAVED H. MOREJO
Khairpur Mir’s