Graduate pharmacy aptitude test

Sir,

The organizing committee for the Graduate Aptitude Test Examination (GATE) expressed its inability to include pharmacy graduates in GATE with effect from the year 2010, owing to operational problems, due to a large number of candidates appearing for the GATE examination. The Scores in the Graduate Aptitude Test for Engineering (GATE) have been in use till the year 2009, for admission into the Master's Program in Pharmacy (M.Pharm) and also for awarding fellowships / scholarships to pharmacy graduates along with engineering graduates. Therefore, in order to facilitate admission of pharmacy graduates into Masters in Pharmacy (M. Pharm) and also to award fellowships / scholarships to pharmacy graduates, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE)[1] has decided to organize and conduct an examination called the Graduate Pharmacy Aptitude Test (GPAT), with effect from the academic year 2010 – 2011. There is a dilemma in the minds of students with regard to their future and GPAT. I am presenting here a concise note on GPAT, as it may prove to be helpful for the students to understand GPAT.

A National Monitoring Committee (NMC) has been constituted for monitoring issues pertaining to the policy as well as for conducting of the GPAT examination. NMC has recommended the conduction of the first GPAT examination for pharmacy graduates, that is, GPAT-2010 by The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara. For the first time a GPAT 2010 examination would be conducted along with a JAM-2010 examination (IITs) on 2 May, 2010, at different centers throughout India. The M.S.University of Baroda, Vadodara, is the sole authority for conducting GPAT-2010 examinations throughout the country and declaring the result for the year 2010.

The GPAT examination consists of 100 multiple choice questions of 100 marks. The examination will be of a three-hour duration. The type of questions asked in the GPAT examination would be to evaluate a candidate's aptitude and subject knowledge of the Pharmacy field, which may involve basic principles, facts, formulae / laws, understanding of the fundamental ideas, and application or drawing observations of the fundamentals of pharmacy discipline. Each question will have four choices for the answer. Out of these, only one choice is correct. Each choice contains a single, stand-alone statement / phrase / data /structure. Candidates have to mark the correct choice by darkening the appropriate bubble against each question on an Optical Response Sheet (ORS). Each right answer will carry one mark, while for each wrong answer one-third negative marks will be deducted. GPAT covers all subjects of pharmacy, that is, natural products, pharmacology, medicinal chemistry, pharmaceutics, pharmaceutical jurisprudence, pharmaceutical analysis, biochemistry, microbiology, and clinical pharmacy. The examination syllabus can be downloaded from http://gpat.in/index.php?gpat=Syllabus.[2] The GPAT examination will be held on 2 May, 2010, between 2 and 5pm. The results will be announced on 24 May, 2010, and can be found at www.msubaroda.ac.in[3] and www.gpat.in.

Impact of GPAT on Pharmacy Education : The National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (NIPER)[4] and many other premier institutes in pharmacy education have made the GPAT score card as an eligibility condition for its entrance examination, therefore, there is no doubt regarding the success of this new examination system for Pharmacy PG level admissions. In fact GATE was basically for engineering graduates, who wanted to join the IITs and there is no PG course of pharmaceutical science in IITs, and that is why GPAT is a right step to see the pharmacy graduate as a separate entity than engineers. Now we can expect an increase in the number of awarding fellowships / scholarships to pharmacy graduates, to attract more research-oriented young minds in Indian universities.