DU Cutoffs: A Midsummer College Dream!
On day one at Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), over 90 % of the general 
seats have already been taken. The college is expecting to fill the remaining seats in the coming next three days under the first list. General category aspirants were required to have least 96% (non-commerce students needed 100%) to grab a seat in BCom (honours) and 95.25% for admission in BA (honours) economics.
With no pre-admission forms this year, colleges are ensuring that on day one all the student query goes off smoothly. This year, the university decided to do away with the submission of application forms. Rather, it asked the colleges to first set the cut-off and then admit eligible students who turn up at the colleges. According to DU Vice Chancellor, ‘Every college decides their cut-off through their staff council. The colleges have become very cautious this year. They do not want to take a risk (of fixing low cut-off and giving admission to more students than the available seats),'.
According to an official, high DU cut-off was the result of sheer guesswork. He said that none of the colleges had an idea about how many students would turn up for admission. Keeping this in mind, the colleges have fixed a high cut-off.
Back at the college premises. The Help Desk here, set up by different colleges is buzzing with anxious parents and students, willing to know the A to Z of seats on the first day of admissions. According to volunteers, most of them wanted to get maximum information about the second DU cutoff list (scheduled to be out on 20th June, 2011), college placements and additional eligibility criteria. In addition to this, the volunteers were flooded with questions ranging from how to fill forms to finding the rooms.
With rising demand for science courses, a majority of students wanted to know about the right career stream for themselves. On the other side, there were also students who were sad to learn that they could not make it to a college of their choice due to the additional eligibility criteria and ballooning DU Cutoffs.
As a relief to students, Delhi University VC said that chances were less that the cutoff marks required would rise in the subsequent cut-offs. He said, ‘After all, the colleges cannot allow the seats to remain vacant,'. On the contrary, SRCC principal P.C. Jain defended the high cut-off and said that it was a screening process and the best students have to be chosen out of thousands of applicants. Also, the criteria has been developed keeping in view which student can give his/her best input to the college.
This practice was criticised by J&K Chief Minister Omar Abduallah, who voiced his concern for future generations. He said that it seems that chances are that the cutoffs might get more competitive making it difficult to students go get into their dream colleges.
However, in order to facilitate the students, different colleges have also put up boards, suggesting information about different counters or a list of the entire admission procedures.
Source: Prachi Srivastava (Shiksha Team)
Date: 17th June, 2011
