Chandigarh, Sept. 19 -- The Panjab University (PU) has preponed the entrance exams for students seeking admission in the undergraduate courses of law, hotel management and sciences by several months. Earlier, the university used to conduct these entrance exams in the month of May, right after students get over with their Class 12 exams and have their results with them. Now, the entrance exams are scheduled to be held from December end. As per an advertisement released by the university, the PU Common Entrance Test (PU-CET) for undergraduate students will now be held on December 28. The five-years law course entrance exam will be held on January 4 and Panjab University Tourism & Hospitality Aptitude Test exam will be held on January 9. For the 2025 session, these exams were held in April and May, while the admission process continued over the summer holidays. Speaking about this, PU controller of examinations, Jagat Bhushan said, "The exams have been scheduled along lines of other private universities of the region and for national exams like the CLAT. Students will anyway prepare for this, and the schedule gets overwhelmed later with exams like JEE and NEET also scheduled simultaneously." While some students are calling these changes shortsighted and alleging they won't get enough time to prepare, Bhushan added that the exams are scheduled during winter vacation. This timing will give students enough time to prepare for the entrances before they appear for their pre-board exams. Meanwhile, coaching centres claim that they are shocked at this development. Megha Sharma, director of Surya Law Academy, Sector 25 said that the move will adversely impact the students. "When the CLAT exam was shifted to December in 2021, we got many students who wanted to sit for the CLAT exam after the boards and we had to tell them they wasted their chance. We anticipate that students, especially from rural areas of Punjab and Haryana, could face the same problem for the PU law entrance exam as well," she said. The PU's five-years law exam is the biggest law entrance exam for this region. Sharma said that usually coaching centres have a crash course specifically for this entrance. "The syllabus of the exam isn't connected much with the NCERT syllabus and students usually enroll for the crash courses to prepare. We don't understand how students will prepare this year as they also have to prepare for their pre-board examinations. There won't be enough time for tuition as students are usually taking coaching for their board subjects at this time." PUCSC president Gaurav Veer Sohal, who had himself appeared for this examination after clearing his board exams, agreed that the new system will make the exam more difficult for the students. "I will speak to the students of UILS to draw up a list of pros and cons. If students face undue difficulty, we will demand that the system be rolled back to the previous year's system," he added....