One Exam, Hundreds Of Universities: How CUET Is Reshaping College Admission Race
Share
For decades, getting into a good college in India came down to one thing — your Class 12 percentage. Students from some boards had a natural advantage over others. A student scoring 95 per cent under one state board was often competing against someone scoring 98 per cent under a different board, with both numbers meaning something entirely different in terms of actual difficulty. Universities, particularly Delhi University, became notorious for cutoffs that climbed so high they started to feel arbitrary.
CUET — the Common University Entrance Test — was introduced to change that. Instead of letting each university set its own cutoff based on board marks that couldn’t be meaningfully compared, a single standardised test now gives students a common score that universities across the country can use to evaluate applicants on the same basis.
The shift is significant. Students who previously had little chance of getting into a central university simply because their board’s marking was stricter now have a more level playing field. A student from a rural district in Uttar Pradesh sitting the same paper as a student from a well-resourced school in Mumbai is, at least in theory, being judged by the same yardstick for the first time.
The numbers reflect how quickly this has taken hold. CUET has grown into one of the largest entrance examinations in the country, with participation from hundreds of universities and lakhs of students each year. Central universities, many state universities, and a growing number of private institutions now factor CUET scores into their admissions process.
For students, the practical change is also real. One application, one exam, multiple universities — rather than running separate applications to different institutions with different requirements and different deadlines. That reduces cost, reduces paperwork, and in theory reduces the chaos that used to define the weeks after board results came out.
But the exam has also added its own pressure. Students are now preparing for two high-stakes assessments simultaneously — board exams that still matter for some purposes, and CUET, which requires its own separate preparation. The syllabi overlap in places but not entirely, and the format of CUET — multiple choice, time-bound, subject-specific — rewards a different kind of preparation than a board exam does. For students without access to good coaching or guidance, navigating both at once is genuinely hard.
The counselling process that follows results is another area where many students struggle. Knowing your score is one thing. Understanding which colleges it qualifies you for, how preference lists work, what happens in subsequent rounds, and how to avoid missing a deadline — this is information that students in well-connected urban schools tend to receive naturally, while first-generation college-goers or students in smaller towns often have to figure out on their own.
That information gap is probably the most important unfinished business in the CUET story. The exam itself has made access more equal. The process around it — the guidance, the counselling support, the timely communication — has not kept pace.
What CUET has undeniably done is force a conversation that was long overdue: about what college admissions should actually be measuring, and whether a number on a marksheet from one of dozens of different boards was ever the right answer to that question. For most people who thought carefully about it, it wasn’t. CUET is not a perfect replacement, but it is a more honest attempt at fairness than what came before.
For students going through admissions this year, the advice is straightforward. Understand the exam pattern early, don’t underestimate the subject papers, keep track of university-specific requirements because they vary, and pay close attention to counselling dates — missing a round can cost a seat that the score itself had earned.
The exam has changed. The preparation has to change with it.
