Colleges in a fix over DU’s new ‘best of four’ directive for Bihar board students

New Delhi

New Delhi

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The Delhi University (DU) admission committee’s new guidelines for calculating the ‘best of four marks’ of applicants from the Bihar Board have created confusion about the status of students who have already been enrolled, varsity officials said.

In a circular issued to colleges on Tuesday, the university’s admission committee said, “50 marks Hindi paper from Bihar Board will not be considered for calculation of best of four….50 marks English paper from Bihar Board will not be considered for calculation of best of four.”

According to an official at an off-campus college, the Bihar School Education Board has papers of 50 marks each for English and Hindi in class 12. In contrast, other boards and CBSE have 100-mark papers in the two subjects.

In DU, students calculate the best of four by including one language, one subject in which admission is sought, and two other academic subjects mentioned in list A in the university Undergraduate admission bulletin available on its website.

In previous years, according to officials at several colleges, they were calculating the best of four of these students on a pro-rata basis. For example, if a student had scored 40 marks out of 50, it was considered as 80 out of 100 while calculating the best of four.

“We used to calculate the percentage of students on a pro-rata basis in previous years and take admissions. Now, when we have already enrolled several students in Hindi (Hons) in the first cut-off list and approved many admissions in the second list, the university has come out with a new directive. What do we do with the admissions of these students? This directive should have been issued before the admissions,” the official quoted above said.

At least 6,729 students from the Bihar Education Board have applied for admissions in DU this year.

But Delhi University’s dean of admissions Shobha Bagai said the University had informed the colleges about this rule in the first cut-off itself. “We do not take any decision before consulting the principals. We have to compare the syllabus of different education boards for the equivalence. In case of the Bihar board, it is not on a par with the syllabus of CBSE or other boards,” she said.

Bagai said the university had last year itself informed the colleges not to consider 50-mark papers on a par with papers with 100 marks. “It is the mistake of the colleges if they still continued with the admissions,” she said.

Suman Kumar, a member of the DU admission committee, said, “The admission branch will take a decision regarding the students from Bihar board who have already been enrolled in some colleges.”

Abhishek Singh, a Bihar board student aspiring to take admission in Political Science (Hons) in DU, said, “I had both English and Hindi in class 12 and we have to include at least one language while calculating the best of four. What do I do now?”

Bagai said, “The University cannot take admissions by including a 50-mark paper in the best of four.”