Earlier, varsity used to have more than dozen cut-offs to get required results
The Delhi University’s (DU) maiden experiment with the “realistic” cut-offs for its merit-based Undergraduate (UG) courses proves to be “path-breaking” as by the end of the fifth cut-off for academic session 2018-19 almost 99 per cent of total UG seats in various courses across the colleges are already filled.
This is contrary to more than dozen cut-offs and special drives which DU usually had in the past. But with cut-offs going “realistic” almost 55,326 seats have been filled out of total 56,000 UG seats in the first five cut-offs itself.
In the backdrop of the fact that earlier DU had to come up with dozen or more cut-offs before its admission process gets over, much to the inconvenience of all including students, colleges and DU administration as the admissions went on even after the start of classes, the idea of “realistic” cut-offs was introduced.
The idea is said to be the “brainchild” of DU’s Admission Committee chairman Professor Maharaj K Pandit who put forth it in committee where it was discussed at length among members who worked out its “modalities” and test its “feasibility”. In order to make it seamless, the Admission Committee also had wider consultations with all stakeholders, including principals of DU colleges, Dean of various faculties, technical experts and other officials.
Though DU had earlier decided that it will come up with only five cut-off in order to fill its UG seats, it announced that it will come up with one more cut-off on July 18 after conducting special drive on July 16 and 17, whereby the students belonging to reserved category quota who inadvertently missed to apply in the respective categories, can now do so by requesting change if any, in their categories.
It has been observed that colleges of DU, till last year, were coming up with their cut-off percentages which they decide on their own regardless of what other colleges cut-offs are. Such cut-offs were announced by colleges without giving deliberate thought or due consideration about where they stand in preference when it comes to choice of course and college by students.
Subsequently, even those colleges who are less sought- after or are less preferred by candidates in the initial cut-offs for taking admission in a particular course, kept their cut-offs in such courses high and unrealistic. As a result, most of their seats remained vacant as students move to course and college of their preference in initial few cut-offs. Thus in order to fill these seats DU had to come up with more cut-off.
But now “coordination” has been established among college principals whereby they can observe each other cut-off percentage on a common platform. For the purpose the DU has provided “dashboards” to each college whereby they can have access to each other cut-offs and can even change their own accordingly. Following which principals, before deciding their final cut-off percentage for a particular course or subject, carefully observe what other colleges benchmarks are for the same subject.
For realising the realistic cut-off each college is required to send “tentative” cut-off to the Admission Committee before coming up with the real cut-off. These tentative cut-offs are “internal” and can be only accessed by those who are provided with the dashboards. Having been able to see each other benchmarks percentage the colleges are provided with an option to alter or modify their own cut-off till eleventh hour, before coming up with the actual cut-off.
A principal of a DU college in the north campus said each college is famous for some particular course or subject and applicants usually rush for taking admission in these courses after meeting it in cut-off.
“If a particular course is not so famous in my college and students usually prefer going to some other college which is famous for it then there is no point in making the cut-offs equivalent or higher to that college for that subject. Because no one would rush to us for taking admission in that course and the seat will remain vacant only to be filled in subsequent cut-off,” he said.