ALLAHABAD: Taking a new initiative to attract talented youths from across the country, department of Centre of Cognitive and Behavioural Sciences (CBCS) of Allahabad University would be holding a joint entrance test for the MSc course of the two centre.

While IIT-K is starting master’s course in the field of cognitive sciences from this year, the course available at AU is oldest in the country. Just two more institutes of the country, IIT-Ghandinagar and IIT-Hyderabad have master’s programme in this specialized field which deals in human behavior.

Although this year, the joint entrance test would provide admission in MS programme at only two institutes, the decision would go a long way in developing something on the footsteps of CLAT (common law admission test), which gives the students option of getting admission in best of Law colleges of the country.

“Although this year, the merit of individual student would give admission at AU or IIT-K, from the next year we will also have IIT-Ghandinagar and IIT-Hyderabad in the list of options and more could come in following years, provided they manage to open the MS programme in this discipline”, said director CBCS, Prof N Srinivasan.

The entrance test, which would be held on February 17, would be held by IIT-K with the name all India COGJET (Cognitive science joint entrance test)-2018 test. There are 13 MS seats for the course at IIT-K and 23 at CBCS, AU. The last date for online application is Jan 29 and the admit cards would be available from February 7.

The test centers for the joint entrance would be held at Kanpur, Allahabad, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Guwahati, Gandhi Nagar and Jaipur.

“Depending on the scores of the aspirants, they would be admitted in course run at IIT-K or at AU”, said the director.

Following the association with IIT-K, the centre at AU, which has already earned its name internationally through the research and post-doctoral students, will now have students cracking the coveted entrance test for the PG courses . Till last year, CBCS had around 130 aspirants completing for 23 seats whereas authorities think that this year there could be around 300 students competing for a total of 36 seats in both the institutes.

CBCS was among the four institutes of the world which had jointly worked for five consecutive years and conducted study on Kalpwasi’s of Magh mela. The research, which was published internationally, is considered to be best work on magh mela and Kumbh of Allahabad and proved to the world the harmonious behavior of devotees, following which such a mammoth gathering co-exist without any stress.

