The introduction of the new undergraduate course might have discouraged a few prospective students from applying to Delhi University and the merging of the programme and the honours courses might just increase the availability of seats for honours, but all these factors may not work to bring down sky-high cut-offs nor make mission admission any easier.
“Cut-offs might just increase this year due to the higher scores in the CBSE results. Around 1,857 students in Delhi alone scored above 95 per cent, and also this time students would not be able to indicate the college of their preference and so we have to assume that whichever subject we have on offer is wanted by all the students applying for that subject,” said Hindu College principal Pradyum Kumar.
His college had declared the highest cut-offs last year with a 99 per cent requirement for History (Honours) and 99.25 per cent for B. Com (Honours).
“Under the new programme, seats are merely redistributed subject-wise with the changes in nomenclatures, but it does not mean availability of more seats, and cut-offs will be decided according to the number of people applying and past experience,” he added.
“Every year, cut-offs increase slightly but there will be a limit to how high a cut-off can go. Obviously it cannot go beyond 100 per cent,” said Deputy Dean Students’ Welfare Gurpreet Tuteja, while reassuring students on ‘Open Day’ that those with lesser cut-offs need not give up completely on DU as the School of Open Learning and the Non-Collegiate Women’s Education Board accepted students with reasonable marks. These two institutions will have the same three-year course.
Last year, the university received 1,35,000 applications for its 54,000 seats and this figure might just go up. Despite all the brouhaha, the interest of students and parents in Delhi University has only increased. This time the university’s ‘open houses’ were packed whereas last year they had almost empty auditoriums.
“I opted for Law because of the new four-year course and I was also discouraged by all the negativity surrounding it, but my friends are mostly intent only on Delhi University, four-year course or not,” said Abhay, a participant in DU’s ‘open house’ this past week.
Such sentiments of wanting a DU degree and nothing else were echoed by almost all the students spoken to during the university’s ‘open days’.
