Students come out of Patna College after taking the entrance test on Tuesday. Picture by Nagendra Kumar Singh

The V-sign said it all.

A smiling Rahul Kumar flashed the sign while emerging from the examination hall at Patna College on Tuesday, the first day of the Patna University entrance test to undergraduate courses. He claimed that most set questions were of Class X standard.

The day passed off smoothly with most examinees saying the two-hour paper was easy. They expected a relatively high cut-off mark for admission in Patna College.

Recalling few questions set in the paper, Rahul said: “The paper asked the names of the Lok Sabha Speaker, law minister and others besides the number of states in India. The standard of questions was average. Any student who has gone through Class X textbooks and keeps tabs on current affairs could easily answer more than 60 per cent of the questions.”

The two-hour paper had 120 questions on history, geography, science, current affairs and sports. It was divided into two segments, one carrying 40 questions from current affairs and general knowledge and the other 80 questions from the subject opted by the student for graduation.

A Patna College teacher, wishing anonymity, said: “The paper had tough, average and easy questions on the lines of those asked in competitive examinations.”

The teacher said easy questions such as number of teams in the Indian Premier League VI were balanced by posers such as the author of Paradise Lost and Cassius was which character in which Shakespeare’s play that tested the students’ knowledge. Paradise Lost is an epic poem by 17th century English poet John Milton, while Cassius was the character in Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar.

A total of 2,600 students vied for 600 seats in the humanities stream of Patna College on Tuesday.

Patna College principal Rash Bihari Prasad Singh said: “The examination passed off peacefully. There was no report of any use of unfair means in the examination.” The college administration had deployed a large number of security personnel and executive magistrates at the examination centre. Four sets of question papers — A, B, C, D — were distributed to prevent students from cheating.

Patna Women’s College will conduct its entrance test on July 3 followed by Magadh Mahila College on July 4, BN College on July 5, Vanijya Mahavidyalaya on July 6 and Patna Science College on July 8.

Twenty thousand forms have been sold for admission to 4,500 undergraduate seats this year, a rise of almost 40 per cent of last year’s form sales.