KARACHI, Sept 14: About 7,300 candidates are likely to appear in the entrance test for five medical colleges in the province, being conducted by the Bahria University at three different centres on Sunday.

There has been an increase of about 33 per cent in the number of students who have applied for admission to BDS and MBBS classes this year. Last year, about 5,500 students had taken the test, while in 2000-2001 the number was about 7,200.

The test, comprising 100 questions, will have to be completed in 65 minutes and will begin at 10am.

According to Captain Ahmed Zaheer, director of the Bahria Institute of Management and Computer Sciences, who is administering the conduct of the test, 2,890 candidates had registered themselves for the test in Karachi, 2,600 in Hyderabad and 1,800 in Larkana centre.

He said that rector of the Bahria University, Vice-Admiral Masood Biabani, was supervising the whole process. A group of teaching professionals had been engaged for the purpose, while the questions had been drawn from a 1,200-question data, based on the Sindh Textbook board’s books and included questions from Biology, Chemistry, Physics and English.

He said the BU was conducting the test for the first time. In contrary to the previous tests conducted by the IBA, the BU would provide a carbon copy of the answer scripts to the students, which they would take along with them and could later match it with the master key of the test, which would also be handed over to the candidates.

The question paper would be a balanced one, aimed to assess the knowledge of the students, said Capt Ahmed, adding that the provisional merit lists would be given to the health department on Oct 19 and no separate results of the test would be released.

The centres have been set up at National Stadium, Karachi; City Stadium, Larkana, and Hyderabad Public School, Hyderabad.