DU to students: New assessment system won’t hit admission

NEWDELHI: Ending the apprehensions of students seeking admission to honours courses, for which the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE)’s Class 12 exam could not be held due to the Covid-19 pandemic, officials in the Delhi University (DU) on Friday said that they would consider the board’s alternative plan of evaluation for these subjects.

They also said that the changes in the CBSE’s evaluation mode would not affect the DU’s merit-based admission process for undergraduate courses, which started on June 20 and would continue till August. The University is yet to release the release dates for the cut-off lists.

DU officials said students will be able to take admission to all courses, irrespective of whether they have appeared in the exam of that particular subject or not.

The CBSE, on Thursday, informed the Supreme Court that it would not conduct the remaining exams for classes 10 and 12, scheduled between July 1 and July 15, due to the pandemic.

Soon after the board’s announcement, students of

Class 12 seeking admissions to courses for which exams were pending raised a few concerns regarding a possible dip in their overall scores. Exams for 12 subjects, including Hindi, geography, business studies, biotechnology, computer science and sociology, are yet to be held across the country.

However, DU’s dean of admissions Shobha Bagai said the average marks of students are generally the same every year, which is why CBSE’s changed evaluation process would not affect the University’s admission process.

“It would have been a problem if they were not marking the subjects for which exams cannot be conducted,” she said.

AK Bhagi, a former member of the DU’s executive council, said, “The issue would have arisen if there were no marks given in some subjects,” he said.

Manoj Khanna, principal, Ramjas College, said, “In DU, the admission process is CBSEdriven. Over 90% applications come from CBSE students. There is a high probability that more students will score between 95% and 100% marks this year since their exams will be scored based on averages. Colleges will have to keep the cut-off high to avoid over-admission.”