IT is that time of the year when thousands of students and parents dare to navigate the complex maze that is the university admissions process. Many would vouch for it being an inefficient and stressful event.

The admissions calendar should be standard across all universities. In a bid to secure admission, students apply to multiple institutions. While they wait for their preferred offers, they accept less preferable ones that come along first. This puts additional financial burden on them as the universities require them to deposit the fee immediately.

Almost every university conducts its separate admission test, a glimpse of which can be seen in the accompanying image. We should instead improve and trust our secondary and higher secondary education, and eliminate the need for additional tests. We can follow the example of the United Kingdom and much of Europe, where only a handful of highly selective universities, like Oxford and Cambridge, require separate admission tests, and that, too, for some specific disciplines.

Also, universities in Pakistan require equivalence certificates issued by the Inter-Board Coordination Committee (IBCC) for foreign qualifications, like O and A levels. This is fine, except why can the IBCC not publish an equivalence chart which universities can use to make the admission decisions? This way, candidates will not have to apply for individual equivalence certificates.

Lastly, some universities ask for an attestation by IBCC of the equivalence certificates issued by the IBCC. The equivalence certificates already have a QR code which can be used by the univ-ersities to confirm their authenticity.

University admission is a stressful affair. I would request the universities, the Higher Education Commission (HEC), and the IBCC to minimise this stress, and to make the process easier and efficient for students and their parents.

Having gone through both the local and international admission processes, I believe that the international process was much smoother and stress-free. I wonder why can we not do it locally?

Adeel Ahmed
Lahore

Published in Dawn, September 10th, 2024