Delhi University has managed to sell more application forms in five days than it managed to sell in the entire admission season last year – as on the fifth day of admissions on Monday, the total number of forms sold had touched 2,12,055 – significantly more than the 1,35,000 forms it sold during the entire admission season in June 2012.
“Of these, 97,164 forms were online, and 1,14,891 hard copies,” said Dean Students’ Welfare J. M. Khurana, adding that that the sale has picked up over the days as on the first day of admissions on Wednesday it was a bare “14,519 hard copies and about 7,164 online.”
The North Campus continued to swell and almost burst at its seams on Monday -- with out-of-towners joining the local crowds trooping in to collect the university application forms for ECA and sports, MA application, School of Open Learning and other forms.
Many of the Boards from other States had recently released their results which explained the substantial bunch of prospective students from out of town who went about looking lost and asking for directions.
“I have State certificates and was also captain in my school for playing tug-of-war and I thought I should try for a sports quota seat,” said Sandeep, a well-built boy from Haryana, who lost his way several times while trying to find the colleges. “I will have to come another day. I move slowly when there are too many people and I might not have time to visit all these colleges and collect forms. I will also not be able to fill these forms quickly,” he said, and added that he had already submitted the OMR (optical mark reader) forms online. “I have only 73 per cent, I just hope I get into any of these North Campus colleges, one volunteer told me to fill that correspondence form but I won’t do that.”
Another boy from Rohtak in Haryana, Aman said: “I wanted to see the campus and visit the nearby areas before deciding whether to come here or not, that is why I didn’t submit an online form.”
“We have had students from Manipur, Assam and the nearby satellite towns, their questions are usually regarding the subject codes that they need to use while filling out the forms, since their structure is different from the CBSE,” said Khirud Kutur, who was volunteering at the North-East help desk.
“We have Bihar, U.P. and Haryana students and they too have questions regarding subject codes,” said the university volunteers.
“I have spoken to several students from out of town, several of them have low marks ranging from 50 to 70 per cent, last year the out-of-towners had more competitive marks,” said Sunny from the All-India Students’ Association, which had also pitched in to help out the admission seekers.
The last day for applying for the newly-introduced Bachelor with honours in Management Studies (BMS) course was Monday and a total sale of 22,000 was reported. The course has an entrance test and is being offered in only six colleges in DU.
Most colleges opened admissions under the ECA and sports quota on Monday. “We sold about 363 sports forms and 219 ECA forms but there are still about eight more days to go and we will know the final figures then,” said Hans Raj principal V. K. Kawatra.
Other colleges had not calculated their sales data by late evening.
