FYJC admissions in Mumbai: Portal crushed by student rush
Mumbai city news: More servers added to increase website’s capacity, but students report facing glitches since last week
Only one in three students — or 67, 289 out of two lakh applicants — were able to fill up both forms for admissions to first-year junior college (FYJC) seats on Monday.
Why? The admissions portal crashed several times, as it could not take the load.
On Monday, the education department added two more servers to the existing seven, so that website can bear the heavy traffic. The department said the servers will help the site — which has been down since Sunday — become faster. Until Monday evening, however, it was still slow and full of glitches.
The FYJC admission is the most anticipated event of the academic calender in the state, and this year, more than 2.5 lakh students are vying for seats. For the first time, the department centralised admissions and made the process online across the state, but it has yet to make a portal that does not slow down with heavy use. Earlier, admissions only in major cities such as Mumbai and Pune were done online.
Students complained that they were not able to even open the option forms — the second part of their applications where they enter college preferences.
READ: Day 1 of Mumbai FYJC admissions: Link to fill application form activated late
“The site has been giving trouble since Sunday. Sometimes, it slows down or crashes. Officers tell us that they are working on it,” said Prashant Ingle, a guidance officer at a help centre at NKES School, Wadala.
Some students said their cultural or sports quota marks, awarded by the board in addition to their HSC scores, have not been uploaded on the site.
Officials said the department had alerted the Maharashtra state board about these problems.
“We received complaints that extra marks were not uploaded, we have informed the board,” said an education officer, on the condition of anonymity.
Colleges are supposed to conduct a ‘zero round ‘ for admissions to in-house, minority, and management quotas from June 16 to June 30, but some of them are yet to start that process as they are waiting for the website to work properly.
“We are unsure of when to announce the first merit list for minority seats as students said they are unable to register online,” said Hemlata Bagla, principal, KC College, Churchgate. “We are waiting for some clarity before drawing up our schedule.”
Some others are announcing merit lists for quotas this week.
St Xavier’s College, Fort, has decided to announce the merit list for Christian minority students today (Tuesday), while HR College will announce theirs on June 23.