Aspirants seeking admission in Delhi University may face tough competition this year with the Class XII results of both the national boards of India — CBSE and ICSE — soaring high. Students can expect comparatively higher cutoffs hovering around 99 per cent this year for admission into the Delhi University. Officials of the university on Friday said during the open day sessions that cutoffs are likely to end at 99 per cent.

Dean, Students Welfare JM Khurana said that this year 2,423 students only from Delhi attained above 95 per cent marks in CBSE which is 900 more students than last year. “Even the students who scored 90 per cent or more in CBSE are 2,650 more than last year. This has raised the stakes by a huge margin. Even ISC results were very high this time. Thus, it is expected that cutoffs will be very high,” informed Khurana.

The Vice-Chancellor of the university, Dinesh Singh, said, “When the Board results are so high, the cutoff automatically soars. It is sad for students who don’t score such high marks, but there is very little we can do to curb the cutoffs.”

Khurana feels that the inclusion of vocational courses in this year’s eligibility criterion for admission will also make a big difference in cutoffs. He said, “Earlier a lot of students were not able to pursue certain courses because they had vocational subjects even though they attained high marks in them. But this year they are allowed to include vocational subjects in ‘best of four’ subjects. This will definitely increase the number of students with a high percentage, thus inflating cutoffs.” Earlier, even with high cutoffs courses under Humanities and liberal Arts would not have very high cutoffs. However, this time even they are likely to go up. Sources say that Humanities cutoffs are likely to go two per cent higher.