St. Stephen’s cut-offs likely to remain high

Students at the Faculty of Arts at Delhi University on Friday. Photo: Monica Tiwari

Cut-offs are likely to remain sky high and the competition will be as stiff as ever in St. Stephen’s College with the college attracting a total 22,700 applications and still counting for its 400 seats on offer. English (Honours) with 60 seats and 3,690 applications is by far the most sought after, closely followed by Economics (Honours) with 100 seats and 3,690 applications.

“Around 22,700 applicants have registered but around 15,000 have submitted their applications. This was around 6 p.m. on Friday,” said St. Stephen’s spokesperson Karen Gabrielle, adding that there were still about five more days to go.

This year, the entire process of applications has been made online and weekends have been reported to have the highest traffic when it comes to online applications even for the Central university. Last year, the college had received around 23,000 applications after the entire process was over.

Although there has been a significant increase in the seats available for English Honours, from 30 last year to 60 this year, and for Economics (Honours), from 50 last year to 100 this year, the cut-offs are not likely to go down according to the college.

“We were expecting the cut-offs to go down slightly this year, but I am afraid judging by the number of applications we have received, the cut-offs are likely to remain the same as last year or even increase slightly,” added Ms. Gabrielle. With five full days of applying still to go, the number of applications this year has already almost touched the total applications last year.

Last year, the highest cut-off was the 98 per cent requirement for Commerce students wishing to pursue the English (Honours) course, followed closely by the 97.75 per cent requirement from Commerce students for the Economics (Honours) course and then the 96.25 per cent requirement from Science students for the Mathematics (Honours) course.

Except for the Science courses, the college takes students from every stream for the Humanities and Commerce courses and that is why they have different cut-offs for students coming from different streams.

Besides English and Economics, the college also offers honours courses in History, Philosophy, Sanskrit, Mathematics, Chemistry and Physics. Last year even the Philosophy (Honours) course registered a whopping seven percentage point hike from 84 per cent in June 2011, to 91 per cent in 2012 for Commerce students. This was because around 800 students had applied to the 10 seats offered in the college.

The college has an admission procedure that is separate from the Delhi University’s and students wishing to get admitted here have to apply with it directly. The admissions are based on marks obtained in the qualifying examination (Class XII) and on interviews held for candidates whose marks are above the cut-offs.

There are separate cut-offs for SC/ST (non-Christian), Christian Scheduled Tribes, Church of North India (CNI), CNI Delhi Diocese, other Christians, Christian physically challenged and other physically challenged.

“The cut-offs this year are likely to be out on the morning of June 22,” said Ms. Gabrielle.