Delhi University has asked prospective students to opt for online applications instead of going all the way to the university, fighting the heat and the crowd and finally paying double, yes double, for the hard copy of the application form.
This year, the online application forms will be available for half the price than what is being charged for the forms sold over the counter. And for the students applying under the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes and Persons with Disability (PWD) category, the online forms come free.
“The Optical Mark Recognition [OMR] form along with the prospectus will cost Rs.100 over the counter, however it costs only Rs. 50 online,” said Dean Students’ Welfare J.M. Khurana.
He said this differential pricing had been adopted to discourage large crowds of prospective students and their parents from coming to the university and suffering from “dehydration.”
However, these measures are not expected to cut down on the arrival of students and their parents to the campus significantly, as last year the online application system had not worked properly in the initial stages and due to this the applicants were distrustful of the system and had filed applications in physical format even after enrolling online.
This year a new aspect in the OMR form is the addition of criteria like “family income per annum”, “location of your school”, and the type of school the applicant studied in — government, public or government-aided.
“This is optional and we have included such options so that we can have some data regarding the sort of students applying to the university; how many of them are from outside the NCR area and similar things. This will help us plan our hostel expansion and provide other facilities more effectively,” said Deputy Dean Gurupreet Tuteja.
“This data will not be sent to the colleges. In fact, the only thing for which the information identifying the student will be used is to send the applicant an SMS updating the status of the application if he or she has included the mobile number,” added Deputy Dean Dr. Gulshan Sawhney.
He also said that all this information was strictly optional and that the application can be completed with the applicant choosing to withhold such information.
Students applying under the PWD category can also heave a sigh of relief as the medical check-ups to certify their disability, a requirement in the past, has been done away with. “There will be a list of hospitals from which the student can get a certificate. This will be uploaded on the website.”
Freedom of choice for SC/ST, PWD students
The freedom to apply for the college of choice has been finally bestowed to the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe and PWD category students as their admissions will now be conducted under the same procedure as that of the general category students.
“Earlier, admissions for these students were done by the university. Each student will now choose three colleges of preference and be allotted a college in which he/she meets the cut-off,” said Mr. Tuteja.
“This used to be quite different from the way admissions for general category and Other Backward Class students used to be done, where cut-offs were released by individual colleges and students took admission to any of the 77 colleges where they met the cut-off.”
In keeping with the policy of inclusion, the university said the OMR forms for all students will now be of the same colour.
“Earlier they had green and the general students had red forms. Now both are red and the only difference is the cost and the category written across the front page of the form.”
