The characteristic long queues at Delhi University (DU) outside counters selling undergraduate admission forms were replaced by applicants spending hours trying to reach a sluggish and mostly unresponsive university website on Monday.
The online application page: ug.du.ac.in went live at 6 p.m. on Monday but several applicants complained that they could not access the page for several hours.
However, in the first 10 minutes of the page going live, 200 applicants registered themselves and within two hours, 6,400 applicants had filled the form.
The university has said that they had received feedback from last year’s experience when the application process went online for the first time and had made arrangements to have dedicated servers to ensure that the portal could handle the traffic.
‘No access’
Saroj Negi, an applicant, said that he had been trying to visit the page from his laptop as well as his mobile phone but had not managed to do so till 8 p.m.: “I will try again tomorrow as I do not want anything to go wrong with my application due to network issues. None of my friends have managed to register themselves either.”
Earlier in the day, DU conducted its first ‘open day’ ahead of the online registration portal for merit-based undergraduate admissions going live.
First ‘open day’
The university acquainted parents and applicants about the various features of the online application form and the changes made to the admission process for the 2017-18 session.
“In order to make the life of the applicant easy, the admission process this year has been started in advance so that students get ample time to gather the required certificates for online registration,” said Maharaj K. Pandit, chairman of the admission committee.
Officials from the university made a presentation after which the floor was opened to questions.
From the functioning of online portals, eligibility criteria to unique questions on reservation, the interactive session brought to fore questions on the minds of several applicants.
A common query was whether there was an option to make an offline payment.
Payment options
The university replied that the offline payment option was only available to applicants under the Persons with Disability quota who can avail the bank challan facility.
Dakshya Singhla, a student of Guru Nanak Dev University asked if he could apply to Delhi University as a BA First year student. The university officials said that he could apply if he made the cut-off list and would be admitted only if he left the course which he was pursuing currently and produce the migration and transfer certificates at the time of admission.
There were also queries regarding hostel facilities. The university said that preference would be given to non-residents of Delhi. The children of Army personnel and paramilitary forces will also be considered for accommodation on a priority.
The university reiterated that Mathematics as a subject in Class XII is mandatory to apply for B.A. (Hons.) Economics or B.Com (Hons.).
These ‘open day’ sessions will be held till May 31 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The online registration process will continue till June 12 after which the first cut-off list will be released on June 20.
