New Delhi, Oct. 20: From next year, students sitting the all-India pre-medical test for MBBS or dental courses will not have to answer long questions.

Instead, they will first take an objective, multiple-choice preliminary test on April 6, and the successful candidates will then appear in a final test on May 10 that too will have only objective questions.

Earlier, candidates were set multiple-choice questions in the preliminary exam and long questions in the final exam.

The Supreme Court today accepted the new format, suggested by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), which conducts the all-India test.

The board told the court the new system would do away with “subjective” marking (of “descriptive” answers to long questions) and also make the process faster since answers to objective questions can be evaluated by computer. So, the results can be declared quickly, freeing up more time for counselling.

The three-hour preliminary exam will have 200 questions: 50 each in physics and chemistry and 100 in biology. The final exam, also of three hours, will have 120 questions of higher “difficulty”: 30 each in physics and chemistry and 60 in biology.

In both exams, students will be offered a choice of four answers — only one of them correct — for every question. Each correct answer will bring four marks and each wrong answer one negative mark.

The cutoff marks for the preliminary round will remain 50 per cent for the general category and 40 per cent for quota students. All candidates scoring above the cutoff — or a number that is 10 times the number of seats available, whichever is less — will qualify for the final exam.

The results for next year’s preliminary exam will be declared in end-April so the students can take the final exam on May 10.

The pre-medical test used to be a single-round, wholly objective-type exam till the CBSE introduced the two-round, objective-cum-descriptive exam in 2004. But it told the court this system was creating difficulties.

“Evaluation (of the final exam) is done mostly in the last 10 days of May. Because of the summer vacation… (the examiners) too remain on vacation. Further, (they) are reluctant to work for the entire duration, i.e. 9-10 days, at one stretch in the scorching heat,” the CBSE said.

The time-consuming evaluation of descriptive answers means it takes 25 days to declare the results, allowing just seven days before counselling begins.

“Many a time the candidates do not get rank letters in time,” the CBSE said.

Now, with both exams setting objective-type questions, human evaluators will not be needed and 10 days can be saved.