The Pakistan Medical Commission (PMC) has announced that the Medical and Dental Colleges Admission Test (MDCAT) results will be subject to post-exam analysis.
The decision was made by the commission’s Medical and Dental Council after deliberation on the issue with a delegation of students on Monday.
The statement that followed the meeting dispelled the notion that the examination included out of syllabus questions and maintained that the 2021 MDCAT exam is being conducted strictly as per the syllabus and structure prepared by the National Medical and Dental Academic Board.
“The exam system is functioning properly and the interim results are correct, subject to the post-exam analysis and the final results to be issued thereafter,” it said.
The council said that the entire examination system is put through a technical audit as an international practice to make sure that the system is working fine.
The process is continuing and the final results of the review, especially after taking the concerns raised by students into account will be made public after completion of the exam.
“The post-exam analysis will be carried out by a team of experts as per international standards. The results will be made public. Any questions found to be contrary to the principles of examination in terms of being vague or sufficiently discriminatory shall be removed and any student attempting such removed question would be given a full mark for the question,” the statement added.
The council also addressed students’ concerns regarding the unavailability of a stable internet connection in the exam centers.
“It is designed to operate on a wireless local area network (LAN) at each center. All the final answers submitted by each student at the end of the exam are uploaded to the server securely without exception,” it said.
The statement added that during technical analysis, it was revealed that only 0.13 percent of the total answers submitted by over 140,000 students this year were skipped or left unattempted.
It said that the MDCAT syllabus was prepared by the National Medical & Dental Academic Board for this year, and was reviewed by the representatives of all provincial boards, the federal board, and IBCC to ensure it covered the curriculum of each region.
“The question bank was created by experts in each subject and thereafter, reviewed by two separate panels of experts to verify the difficulty indexing ascribed to each question. The exam is within the prescribed syllabus,” it added.
The council clarified that the exam is taken in digital format and the scoring is done by a computer, therefore, no element of human error is involved.
Source: Pro Pakistani