AURANGABAD: Starting next year, Architecture course aspirants will not have the liberty of appearing for the mandatory entrance testduring a window period of five months.
The Council of Architecture (CoA) has announced major changes in the National Aptitude Test in Architecture (NATA), according to which, the entrance will be held on a single day. Also, the entrance test, which was the first national level entrance test conducted online in 2006, will be held in offline as a paper-pencil test. The NATA 2017 for the academic session 2017-2018 will be held all over the country on April 16 next year.
The latest notification by the Council states that the decision was taken considering the anomalies regarding the conduct of the NATA in the past and further improve and strengthen the conduct of exam. It has been decided to conduct NATA as a one-day examination (Pencil and paper based test) all over the country, similar to the other national level entrance exams held across the country.
R K Oberoi, registrar of CoA, said the decision should be considered student-centric. "We have taken care that the examination schedule does not clash with other national entrance examinations," he said.
The sweeping changes in NATA, which is an important gateway for securing admission to architecture courses across the country, including in Maharashtra, have evoked mixed reactions from the stakeholders.
NATA has been adopted by a majority of universities, government institutions and all the private institutions as the eligibility examination for admissions for architecture courses.
It measures the aptitude of the applicant for the field of Architecture in the form of drawing and observation skills, sense of proportion, aesthetic, sensitivity, Mathematics and critical thinking ability that have been acquired over a long period of time and that are related to the field of study.
Educational counsellor Vivek Velankar said making NATA a single-day examination would add to the stress of students, who prepare for multiple entrance examinations.