For the first time Delhi University's prestigious St Stephen's College, along with Jesus and Mary College, has agreed to join the university's centralised admission process from the upcoming academic session on a condition to have its direct application process also.
While the university and college's technical teams found a way under which the candidates were issued a registration number of DU's online portal and then followed the college application with the help of the varsity's registration number. The officials said the admission of foreign students and Persons with Disabilities (PwD) faced hardships.
"Every year, our college has a good number of enrollment of foreign students. It is also because of our complete online admission process for years now. But this year, which the students had to register with the university's website first, it did not have a slot for foreign students, so they could not proceed further," the public information officer of the St Stephen's College AD Mathur, told The Pioneer.
According to Mathur, while filling up the application of the college, it provides an option for Indian and foreign students under the category of nationality while there is only the option for Indians in the registration form of the university, which had caused the hurdle.
While the university has a separate facility for international students, the college argued that in the university's main registration portal, foreign students could apply directly online. They had to be redirected to the separate registry which is confusing, college officials opine.
On the other side, the college also had a waiver on application fees for the PwD students and this year it changed due to the centralised admission process. "The PwD students have special concessions at our college. They would not have to pay the application fees but unfortunately, while they have to register with the university first, they have to shell out some Rs50 for the registration," said Mathur.
Spokesperson for admissions of university, Sunaina Kanojia said the option available to foreign students is through the Foreign Students Registry.
The registration process to St Stephen's was concluded on June 17 and the first cut-off list was out on June 18.
This year, the college has seen a drop in the number of applications by 20 per cent. Compared with 29,672 applications received last year, as disclosed by the college, there were only around 23,500 students who were interested in studying this year.
While English has the maximum takers, the next highest cut-off is of Economics with 98.25 per cent for the general category. "In English, the cut-off for Science is 98 per cent, Commerce is 99 per cent and for Humanities it is 97.5 per cent. In Economics, cut- off for Science is 97.25, for Commerce 98.25 per cent and for Humanities 96.75 per cent," stated the cut-off list, released on the college website.
Stephen's offers Honours courses in Economics, English, History, Philosophy, Sanskrit, Mathematics, Chemistry, along with the Bachelor of Arts (BA) and Bachelor of Science (BSc) pass courses.