DU COLLEGES

Khalsa College also kept a 100% cut-off for its Bcom course. Jesus and Mary College has kept a 100% cutoff for its BA (honours) in psychology for students who do not include psychology in their best-of-four subject combination.

One of the most sought-after commerce colleges in the country, Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), has announced 100% cut-off in both BA (honours) in economics and Bcom (honours), recording a jump of one and 0.5 percentage point respectively compared to last year’s score requirements.

Most of the commerce courses across colleges are in the range of 97-100% with 38 out of 54 colleges offering Bcom (honours) to students with a score of 98% and above.

Since DU colleges do not follow a first-come, first-serve policy, all students making the cut have to be admitted, leading to the risk of more students being admitted than a college’s sanctioned capacity.

Since there was no final endterm board exam, due to the Covid-19 second wave this year, the results of the Class 12 exams for most boards, including the bellwether Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), were prepared on the basis of a student’s past performance.

A total of 220,156 CBSE Class 12 students scored 90% or more this year, compared to 196,620 in 2020 — a jump of nearly 12%. The number scoring 95% or more has almost doubled to 70,004 from last year’s 38,686.

Manoj Khanna, principal of Ramjas College, said the high cut-offs were a precautionary measure to tackle over-admissions. “This was a precautionary measure as political science was one of the most soughtafter courses last year as well. We ended up admitting more than 200 students as against the 93 seats for the course. Even the

BA programme saw surplus admissions last year. Covid-19 protocols are also here to stay and if students are called back on campus for blended learning, we have to ensure we have enough space to accommodate all students. This is why we just could not have over-admissions this year.”

Khanna also said that lack of data sets affected the ability of colleges to understand or predict admission demand. “If we allowed students to apply for colleges and courses like previous years, colleges would have had some data points to understand what students prefer. In the absence of that, colleges are left with little information to predict trends and tend to be on the cautious side,” he said.

For the past two years, DU application form allows students to select their courses and college after the cut-offs are declared.

DDU College principal Hem Chand Jain said: “Colleges are left with no choice when they receive data sets stating that around 1,250 eligible students have scored around 100% as their best-of-four subjects. Computer Science has emerged as a popular subject as it has a lot of scope and only 20 colleges in the university offer the course so we had to keep the cut-offs high to avoid over-admissions. Till a few years ago, when students went to specific colleges to apply, it was easier for colleges to decide cut-offs because we had a data set knowing how many students want to study a particular subject at a particular college. But online admission forms now allow students to apply to all courses at one go. Lack of that specific data set also contributed to the high cutoffs. However, students should not be disheartened and try for the subsequent lists”.

Hansraj College principal Rama Sharma said, “We had an extensive discussion with our department and analysed the data for previous years. Computer science has emerged as a popular course and we had over-admissions last year as well. As far as commerce courses are considered, students scoring 100% will prefer SRCC. We want to admit more students so we have kept the cut-offs lower so that students who do not have 100% get an option to study here.”

Cut-offs for St Stephen’s College are announced separately.

Admissions under the first cut-off will be conducted between Monday and Wednesday, and the second cut-off list will be released on October 9. The university is expected to release five cut-offs and a special cut-off.

Officials said DU received over 250,000 applications, for around 70,000 undergraduate seats this year. The applications received are approximately 100,000 fewer than last year.

So far, there is no clarity on the mode of classes to be conducted for these students when they begin their academic session in November.

DU is currently only allowing final-year students to come to campus for practical work.

Former Dean (admissions) Shobha Bagai said this mode of admissions is not sustainable. “We cannot announce a cut-off higher than 100% or keep doing over-admissions. This is why an entrance test has been in demand for too long. Due to over-admissions, there is a distortion between the number of available seats and the number of students admitted in these courses affecting the teacherstudent ratio, workload on teachers, and even infrastructural demands.”

INDIA HITS BACK

arriving in India from the UK,” a person familiar with developments said on condition of anonymity.