ISLAMABAD: After facing strong criticism from students, the Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC) again put verified results of Medical and Dental Colleges Admission Test (MDCAT) online, but parents and students still have their reservations.
A group of parents and students staged a protest outside the PMC office, complaining that the students had been marked absent or their names did not match with their roll numbers.
They said in the new list, their names and roll numbers were corrected but their marks reduced.
“The verified result is now available online again and the students may check their result now. There is a very small minority of students whose result is missing because neither their names nor roll numbers could be matched. Therefore, these students will be notified next week and asked to appear for verification,” said a press release issued by the PMC on Friday.
It said: “We received numerous complaints from students that they had erroneously been marked ‘absent’. Some students also complained that their names and roll numbers did not match. To investigate the complaints and to ensure that no student was deprived of the correct result, the result was taken offline for reconciliation,” added the press release.
It said MDCAT result was a computer generated result. Hence, any investigation required it to be taken offline and re-verified in its entirety through physical verification of students’ admit cards and answer sheets.
Therefore, the examination team carried out a detailed scrutiny and re-verification spanning over 30 hours.
The press release said the issue arose primarily due to an anomaly in the computer generation of the result.
Many students had inadvertently written the incorrect or incomplete roll number or names on their answer sheets.
It said the computer while checking the papers identified all results that either had a non-existent roll number or a duplicate one.
All such results were taken out of the final list by the operating system automatically and such anomalies were marked absent by the system. In some cases, the wrong roll number written by a student belonged to another student who was actually absent and the computer sought to rectify the irregularity by inputting the name of the student in the database against the incorrect roll number.
This showed up as a mismatched name against the correct roll number.
Meanwhile, addressing a press conference PMC Vice President Ali Raza said the commission received thousands of applications for recounting.
He claimed that a small number of candidates who appeared in the exam had written their roll numbers and names wrong due to which errors erupted in the result.
He said 121,181 students had attempted the test, 67,611 qualified it, obtaining more than 60pc marks.
He said a number of candidates who appeared in MDCAT had complained of marking themselves as absent in the result even though they were present in the exam. Candidates also came with the complaint that their names and roll numbers did not match.
He said over 600 candidates had written their roll numbers wrong while 150 had written their names wrong on the answer sheets.
Mr Raza said as an act of transparency, the PMC decided to give free of cost opportunity to candidates for re-counting of their papers.
According to the PMC, it has re-checked and can confirm that 14 marks have been added to the result of each student who took the exam on Nov 29.
Moreover, seven marks were added to the result of each student who took the exam on Dec 13.
Published in Dawn, December 19th, 2020