DU admissions won’t be affected by changes in CBSE’s evaluation process: Officials

Ending the apprehensions of students seeking admission to honours courses, for which the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE)’s Class 12 exam could not

Ending the apprehensions of students seeking admission to honours courses, for which the Central Board of Secondary Education’s (CBSE)’s Class 12 exam could not be held due to the Covid-19 pandemic, officials in the Delhi University (DU) on Friday said that they would consider the board’s alternative plan of evaluation for these subjects.

HT Image

They also said that the changes in the CBSE’s evaluation mode would not affect the DU’s merit-based admission process for undergraduate courses, which started on June 20 and would continue till August. The University is yet to release the release dates for the cut-off lists.

The DU officials said that students will be able to take admission to all courses, irrespective of whether they have appeared in the exam of that particular subject.

The CBSE, on Thursday, informed the Supreme Court that it would not conduct the remaining exams for classes 10 and 12, scheduled between July 1 and July 15, due to the pandemic.

The board, on Friday, issued a detailed plan under which the remaining exams would be evaluated based on the average of the top two or three exams students appeared for, before the lockdown to contain the Covid-19 pandemic was announced.

However, those who could appear in only one or two exams will be evaluated based on those subjects and internal assessments. These students will also get a chance to appear in exams conducted by the CBSE to improve their marks later. The board will announce the results of the Class 12 exams by July 15.

Soon after the board’s announcement, students of Class 12 seeking admissions to courses for which exams were pending raised a few concerns regarding a possible dip in their overall scores. Exams for 12 subjects, including Hindi, geography, business studies, biotechnology, computer science and sociology, are yet to be held across the country. An additional 11 subjects are pending for Class 12 students in northeast Delhi, where exams were suspended due to the communal riots.

However, DU’s Dean of Admissions Shobha Bagai said that the average marks of students are generally the same every year, which is why CBSE’s changed evaluation process would not affect the University’s admission process. “If we look at the bigger picture now, the CBSE’s changed evaluation process will not affect the merit-based admission process for undergraduate courses much. Generally, the average marks of all subjects are more or less the same. It would have been a problem if they were not marking the subjects for which exams cannot be conducted,” she said.

Bagai said that the University’s admission committee would hold a meeting next week to discuss the changes brought in by the CBSE. “We will still wait for a while before announcing anything in case the CBSE comes up with some more clarifications. Otherwise, we don’t have a reason to make any change in the admission process,” she said

In DU, for admission to BA (Hons) or BSc (Hons) courses in any subject, one has to include the particular subject in which the admission is sought while calculating the average of ‘best of four’. Failing which, there is a deduction of 2.5% marks from the average.

AK Bhagi, a former member of the DU’s executive council, said, “If the CBSE board is marking all subjects irrespective of whether a student has appeared for the exam, DU will not have to make any changes in the admission process. The issue would have arisen if there were no marks given in some subjects. Now, even those seeking admission to courses like Sociology (Hons) or BSc in Computer Science, for which exams could not be conducted, will face no issue since they will be awarded marks in these subjects as well,” he said.

Some principals, however, are of the opinion that the change in the evaluation process could lead to high cut-offs this year. Manoj Khanna, the principal of Ramjas College, said, “In DU, the admission process is CBSE-driven. Over 90% of applications come from CBSE students. There is a high probability that more students will score between 95% and 100% marks this year since their exams will be scored based on averages. Colleges will have to keep the cut-off high to avoid over-admission.”

However, some teachers said students who usually focus on one particular subject could score less overall if the exam is not held. Pankaj Gupta, a faculty member at Rajdhani College and a former member of DU’s admission committee, said, “There is a possibility that some students were good in certain subjects for which exams could not be conducted and were preparing hard for them. In such cases, they might not be able to score much in other subjects. This will drop their total percentage, due to which they could miss a chance to get a seat in a DU college,” he said.