KARACHI, Nov 15: About 2300 candidates, seeking admissions to MBBS classes in the two government medical colleges in the city, appeared in the entry test, held for the second time, at the KU campus, on Thursday.

The students looked shaky about the test paper before appearing in the examination, as the test conducting body — the Institute of Business Administration — had announced that it had got new paper setters and test would be prepared independently.

Many of the students said that after the mistakes and mishaps of Oct 28, when the first entry tests were held and then revoked on ground of the observed irregularities, they had lost faith in the testing body.

“Without knowing that the re-test will be fair or not we are taking it as we have no other choice,” said students having passed their qualifying examinations from the DHA, St Joseph’s, DJ Science, Sir Syed and Adamjee colleges.

The students said that the Sindh Health Department should go for a change in its policy regarding preparation of merit lists for admission to the medical colleges. It should not put too much confidence in the entry tests giving it higher weightage, but value these tests similar to the test conducted by the NED University of Engineering and Technology.

“Once you decrease the weightage, things would become more easier and comfortable for the testing body as well as for the professional educational institutions, since there would be lesser involvement of mafia, foul-players and coaching centres, majority of which resort to exploit the students,” observed some of the parents accompanying their wards before the test.

The in-charge of the IBA medical colleges entrance test for Karachi centre, Syed Fazl-i-Hassan, said that about 150 senior teachers from the University of Karachi and the IBA performed as invigilators during the test that lasted for about 80 minutes. At the end of the test, students were informed by the organizers that first provisional list of the merit seats would be displayed at Dow Medical College by 3pm, on Nov 28.

After appearing in the test, students said that the competent authorities should either reduce the number of questions given in the part-III (Physics) or should allocate more time to answer that portion. It was too difficult to attempt 20 questions, including six numerical, in 15 minutes, they viewed.

One female student from Sir Syed College said that the number of questions in Biology should be reduced. Students from the DHA and Adamjee colleges said the entire paper was from the Intermediate class books and it was easier than the last paper held on Oct 28.

“After the first entry test fiasco, we were doubting that the re-test paper would be relatively tough, which proved true in the case of Biology portion,” added another group of students.

Meanwhile, the IBA entry tests for medical colleges were held at two other centres in Larkana and Jamshoro for another 3200 candidates, seeking admissions to MBBS and BDS courses at the Liaquat University of Medical and Health Sciences, Jamshoro; Chandka Medical College, Larkana, and People’s Medical College, Nawabshah.