DU extends 2nd phase of admissions process till July 26

Candidates who have not applied for Phase 1, or those who have applied and not yet provided their course and college preferences, will also be able to do so till Wednesday

Delhi University (DU) on Monday extended the second phase of its undergraduate admission process by two days, after requests from several applicants, said officials aware of the decision, adding that the rest of the entry schedule remains unchanged for now.

Delhi University announced the extension came before the portal for the second phase was to shut on Monday evening. (HT Photo)

The move came before the portal for the second phase was to shut on Monday evening. Officials said the window will now shut at 4.59pm on Wednesday.

Anand Sonkar, deputy dean (admissions) said, “We received many extension requests from students, so we extended the phase by two days.”

Candidates who have not applied for Phase 1, or those who have applied and not yet provided their course and college preferences, will also be able to do so till Wednesday, said a press release issued by the university administration.

The university had, till 6pm on Monday, received 300,360 registrations on the Common Seat Allocation System (CSAS) and 238,888 complete and submitted applications.

DU is using Common University Entrance Test (CUET) scores to determine admissions this year, a process that was first adopted last year.

After the window shuts on Wednesday, university officials will work on assigning what are simulated ranks — essentially a tentative rank for each programme a candidate may have selected as a preference. Candidates will be allocated their highest possible preference based on their programme-specific merit score, category, and the availability of seats.

The CSAS portal will lock students’ preferences on July 27, said officials. The simulated list will then be declared on July 29 at 5pm. The window to change preferences will then be open till 11.59pm on July 30.

Students can also choose to upgrade for a higher preference on their list in the subsequent rounds, officials said.

The third phase of the admission process will then begin on August 1 and deal with seat allotment and admissions based on candidates’ college-course preferences. Candidates can accept their seat by August 4.

Bijayalaxmi Nanda, principal of Miranda House said, “Once information (of a candidate accepting their seat) comes to us, we will verify their documents and students can then pay their fees.”

DU officials have said that once a seat is allocated in a particular round, the candidate must ‘accept’ the allocated seat before the last date for the given allocation round, with inactivity or inaction to be taken as non-acceptance to the allocated seat.

Students are competing for 71,000 seats in the popular university. However, officials assured that unlike previous years, colleges will not end up admitting more students than they have seats for — a common recurrence, known as over-admissions.

Sonkar said, “We have taken care of that... Since students are allocated seats on the basis of availability, such a situation will not arise.”

Till 2021, the DU undergraduate admission process relied on Class 12 board exams scores. All applicants who met the cut-off criteria announced by the varsity for a particular course were eligible for admission to that course.

However, the cut-off-based admission system led to over-admissions in several courses, severely knocking back student-teacher ratios, impairing the quality of classroom instruction and presenting colleges with infrastructural headaches.

DU had registered 2,17,653 students last year, as against around 71,000 seats, with 65,000 students admitted. The university’s 68 colleges offer a total of 78 UG programmes and 198 BA programme combinations. The undergraduate session will commence on August 16, nearly 2.5 months before it did last year.