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Students skip Class 11 admission, prepare for entrance exams instead
The main reason behind the drop in cut-offs this year given by colleges and education experts is that most students with higher marks have already taken admissions in private coaching institutes along with preparing for various entrance exams after Class 12 board exams
Many prominent colleges are worried that most of the students with higher marks in the Class 11 round 1 merit list declared yesterday are not in the race to take admissions. Whereas, more than 22,000 students have been rejected admission in round 1. The main reason behind the drop in cut-offs this year given by colleges and education experts is that most students with higher marks have already taken admissions in private coaching institutes along with preparing for various entrance exams after Class 12 board exams.
Rutvik Mahale, a Class 11 student, said, “I want to take admission in the National Defence Academy (NDA) after Class 12 and so, to prepare for its entrance examination, I have already taken admission in a private coaching class in Pune in the month of March this year. They are attached with one of the junior colleges in Pune where they will give us Class 11 admission in the Science stream and along with the NDA entrance exams’ preparation, we will do our Class 11 and 12 studies.”
Another student, Monica Gandhi, said, “In the Class 10 board exams, I scored above 90% but I haven’t taken admission anywhere till now. I want to prepare for the medical entrance exams’ test after the Class 12 board exams so I will be doing Class 11 externally and will then take admission for Class 12 board exams. For the entrance examination, I have already started my study preparations from the last few months.”
Speaking on condition of anonymity, the principal of a prominent college in Pune, said, “We have noticed that a large number of students who score well above 90% do not take admission through this regular admission process. Rather, they opt for private coaching classes’ admission even before the results are declared. An entire ecosystem of these private coaching classes is impacting the regular junior college admission process, which could prove dangerous in the coming years.”
Whereas professor Arun Adsul, former vice-chancellor of the Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU), said, “I have worked in the education field for the last more than 30 years and as the new education policy (NEP) is going to be implemented across the country, we need to adopt some new things. During this admission period, we have noticed that the private sector is focusing more on the evaluation part to get higher marks rather than going deep into the subject or teaching students the basics of the subject. So in coming years, if a student scores high marks, it won’t be necessary for him/her to know the subject very well as he/she has studied only for scoring marks.”
