Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has declared that, starting with the current academic session, 2024–2025, the university will accept the results of the National Eligibility Test (NET) as the selection criteria for admission to its Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) programmes instead of the National Testing Agency (NTA) entrance exam.
The university in a notice released on April 26 said, “The University Grants Commission, to help the students with one national entrance test as part of the implementation of National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, has decided vide its Public Notice dated March 27, 2024, that score of National Eligibility Test (NET) conducted by UGC and the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) can be used by the Universities/HEIs for Ph.D Admission in place of entrance test.”
As per the notice, the university will only accept the applications for Ph.D. programmes from the following candidates:
Category 1: JRF qualified
Category 2: Qualified for Assistant Professorship without JRF
Category 3: Neither qualified for JRF nor for Assistant Professorship but eligible for admission to Ph.D only on the basis of NET score
The admission under JRF category will be done as per existing norms, that is 100% weightage will be assigned to viva-voce. However, the admission under NET score category will replace the entrance examination. For candidates getting admission through NET score, the weightage of NET score and viva-voce will be 70% and 30% respectively.\
The notification further highlighted that the marks obtained by the candidates in the NET Examination conducted by UGC and CSIR will be valid for a period of one year for the purpose of admission to Ph.D programme as decided by UGC. “The validity of JRF will be as mentioned in the JRF award letter,” it read.
Interestingly, the university may hold an entrance examination for the programmes where NET in the prescribed subject are not conducted by UGC/CSIR. Further to this, the e-prospectus for 2024-25 Ph.D programmes will be released by the university on its website anytime soon.
