The National Aptitude Test in Architecture (NATA) will be conducted twice a year from 2019 onwards. This announcement was made by president of the Council Of Architecture (COA), Vijay Garg. Now the exam will be conducted first in mid-April and then again on the first week of July 2019.
Earlier the exam was conducted once a year in the month of April. this had raised concerns that the dates might clash with other board exams. Thus, many states had asked the council to postpone the NATA exam.
This is the reason the Coucil Of Architecture has decided to conduct NATA twice a year from 2019 onwards. “..we have decided to have two exams, one mid-Aril and another in the fisrt week of July 2019.” said Vijay Garg, President of COA.
Twice A Year Exam, Changes In Exam Pattern
Like JEE Main, in NATA too, candidates can now appear in both the exams or any one of their choice. In addition to that another major change that is coming up is that the exam pattern has also been changed. Previously both aptitude and drawing papers were given an equal 90 minutes each. However now for the aptitude section 60 mins will be given and for drawing section 120 minutes will be given.
The reason for this change was also given by the COA President. He quoted that “We found that the failure rate was high in the drawing paper. So, in order to improve the performance, we have decided to increase the time for it from this year.”
Centralised Counselling Expected
Also the council has proposed that there must be a national level counselling for admission in architecture colleges.
Right now the students have to apply separately for admission in different states. Thus, to ease up the process the council wishes to have a centralised counselling. However they will be considering the state reservation policies.
The President quoted: “Currently several seats in architecture colleges fall vacant and if a centralised counselling is brought in, after filling the seats with local students the remaining can be thrown open for candidates from other states.”
The President also clarified that students from the humanities stream can also participate in NATA, if they qualify the additional exams of physics, chemistry and mathematics conducted by the CBSE.
