UG admission in DU: Panel recommends common entrance test

New Delhi, Dec. 4: A ninemember panel constituted by Delhi University Vice-Chancellor Yogesh Singh has recommended that the varsity hold a common entrance test to ensure ‘substantial objectivity’ in the admission process, amid a controversy erupting over the high number of cent percent scorers from the Kerala Board.The committee formed under the chairmanship of Dean (Examinations) DS Rawat was supposed to examine the reasons for over and under admissions to undergraduate courses, study the board-wise distribution of admissions in all undergraduate courses, suggest alternative strategies for optimal admissions in undergraduate courses and examine OBC admissions with reference to the Non-Creamy Layer status.

The committee analysed the data of admissions which are cut-off based and saw that it showed the highest intake of students from the CBSE Board, followed by the Kerala Board of Higher Secondary Education, Board of School Education, Haryana, ICSE and Board of Secondary Education Rajasthan.

“The Committee is of the considered view that as long as undergraduate admissions in the university are cut-off based, there is no way that fluctuations, sometimes significant, can be avoided to maintain equity. “Any effort to normalise marks awarded by various boards may be fraught with the danger of devising a formula which may not be equitable on some scale or the other,” the report said.

Noting that the normalisation of marks of various boards may not stand the test of legality, if contested in a court of law, the report said that “neither cut-off based admissions nor admissions through normalisation of awarded marks by various boards are options which observe maximum objectivity in admissions”.