No final-semester exam, performance till March to count

CHANDIGARH: Punjab Engineering College (PEC) will not conduct examinations this year for students of the outgoing batch (semester eight) and instead of grading them will declare them ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ on the basis of their performance till March.

“PEC has decided to complete semester eight by converting course registrations to pass/fail. Students will get credit for all registered courses, including minors, honours and specialisations. But, no SGPA will be computed. The CGPA at the end of semester seven will be final,” the institute said.

According to the revised criteria, students who have done ‘well enough’ till March, will get a pass grade. Borderline performers will be asked to complete an online course, and will pass overall if they complete it.

Students who have ‘failed’, will be given an ‘incomplete’ grade for now, and will have to take a test on campus, whenever it is safe to do so, PEC said.

Dheeraj Sanghi, the director of the institute, said, “We expect more than 90% final semester students to get provisional degrees by mid-June. We don’t want to conduct online tests unless we are sure it is being done fairly.” The decision was taken as many students in their last semester have their joining after completion of Btech, Sanghi said.

For the remaining students, tests will be conducted in July as per AICTE guidelines. A decision on this will be taken by May-end.