ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC) has decided to reduce the passing percentage from 65 per cent to 55pc for admission to dental colleges.

Moreover, topic “gout” has been removed from curriculum and weightage of Medical and Dental College Admission Test (MDCAT) subjects have been slightly modified.

According to a statement, the decision was taken at the 12th meeting of the Medical and Dental Council with PMC President Dr Arshad Taqi in the chair. The meeting approved reducing the MDCAT passing percentage for dental programme from 65pc to 55pc for the upcoming admissions to dental colleges across Pakistan.

Upon the recommendations of the National Medical and Dental Academic Board, the MDCAT curriculum weightage of subjects was approved with minor changes.

“As recommended by the academic board, the topic of gout has been removed from the MDCAT curriculum. The board’s recommendations are based on inputs from provincial higher secondary boards while confirming that the MDCAT curriculum was in line with national curriculum 2006 as well as the provincial curriculums and did not exceed or appear to hold anything to be out of the syllabus. Some of the provincial boards suggested the removal of certain topics in biology even though they exist in the HSSC curriculum. The academic board rejected the request as these are the topics which are significant in terms of knowledge-based for a student to be admitted to a dental and medical college,” it stated.

“The weightage of questions in respective subjects of MDCAT curriculum has been slightly modified with Biology from 32pc to 34pc, Physics and Chemistry from 26.5pc to 27pc, English from 10pc to 9pc and logical reasoning from 5pc to 3pc. The medical and dental colleges’ admission test would consist of 200 questions based on the above percentages,” it stated.

Published in Dawn, June 29th, 2022