New Delhi: The third edition of the Common University Entrance Test-Undergraduate will be completed in seven days and there will be no normalisation of scores as all exams will be conducted in a single shift, the National Testing Agency announced on Saturday.

For 15 subjects, tests will be in pen-paper mode and for the other 48 subjects the exam will be held in computer-based mode, it said.

This year, over 13.4 lakh candidates have registered for the common entrance test for admission to undergraduate courses in 261 central, state, deemed and private universities, the National Testing Agency (NTA) said.

Delhi University, Banaras Hindu University and Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow, were the top three most-favoured universities for the applicants.

Last year, the Common University Entrance Test-Undergraduate (CUET-UG) was held in 34 days and 93 shifts to avoid technical glitches. The exam was also extended twice.

In the first edition of the exam in 2022, the test was plagued by technical glitches. Also, the long duration was due to a particular subject being conducted over multiple shifts, which also required normalization of the scores during the announcement of the results.

Earlier, the NTA had announced that the exam would be conducted between May 15 and 31. But now the exam is going to be completed by May 24.

The NTA and University Grants Commission (UGC) have decided that for the papers with the bigger number of applications, the tests will be held in pen-paper mode. Earlier, all the tests were computer-based.

The 15 subjects for which tests will be held in pen-paper mode include Chemistry, Biology, English, General Test, Economics, Physics and Mathematics.

Barring Hindi and English, all language papers will be in computer-based mode. The subjects for computer-based mode of exam also include Psychology, Fine Arts, Fashion Studies, Anthropology and Legal Studies.