DU’s first cut-offs set tone for tough admission race

NEW DELHI: The minimum marks required for admission into undergraduate courses at city colleges continued to spiral upwards as Delhi University announced on Wednesday

NEW DELHI: The minimum marks required for admission into undergraduate courses at city colleges continued to spiral upwards as Delhi University announced on Wednesday its first list of cut-offs, which remained above 97% for popular courses.

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The highest cut- off was BCom (Honours) at Ramjas College at 99.25%, up from last year’s 97.75%.

But unlike the past three years, no college declared 100% cut-offs.

This year more than 250,000 students applied for the 54,000 seats in 61 colleges with the high cut-offs setting the stage for a frantic admission season.

Be it on-campus or off-campus colleges, the cut-off for the BA programme soared. For instance, at Hansraj College the cut-off increased from 90% to 96%.

A similar trend was seen at Kirori Mal College, where the minimum percentage of marks required for admission jumped from 91% to 96.5%. At Bharati College, the cut-off for the subject increased to 82% from 80%.

The science stream was the best bet for students as cut-offs remained either the same or decreased across colleges. At Hansraj College, the cut-off for the much-sought-after BSc (honours) Computer Science was slashed to 97.25% from 97.75%.

At Miranda House, the cut-offs were almost the same as that of last year. In Physics, applicants with a best of three (physics, chemistry and mathematics score) of more than 96.66% will get admission in the first list.

But there was no city-wide trend of soaring cut-offs this year as many colleges held onto the benchmark set last year or even brought the cut-off down marginally.

Experts asked students to not panic if they didn’t get through the first list of cut-offs— prepared on the basis of the number of students scoring above 95% marks in the CBSE Class 12 exams — as DU will issue five cut-off lists this year. Students who change their streams will face a deduction of 1%-5%, depending on the college. This disadvantage is only for the BA programme and BCom programme.

But if a student is choosing to study a subject she did not study in Class 12, the deduction in percentage for honours courses is a game-changing 2.5%.

The cut-offs for economics courses in most colleges remained above the 95% bracket. The highest cut-off in the subject was at Ramjas College, at 98.5%, followed by Shri Ram College for Commerce at 98.25%.

With its high BCom (honours) cut-off, Ramjas College trumped Shri Ram College for Commerce that declared a 98% cut-off.

For the BCom programme, the highest cut-off was at 98.75% at Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Khalsa College and Ramjas College.

The cut- of f for English remained the same as last year across colleges. The highest cutoff was at Sri Guru Tegh Ba had ur Khalsa College at 98.75%.

But for subjects such as History (honours) and Political Science (honours) the cut-off plunged at off-campus colleges. But cut-offs for the same courses at popular colleges remained above 95%.

For instance History (honours) at Lady Shri Ram College for Women remained the same as last year at 97%.

Among humanities courses, Psychology (honours) saw a high cut-off of 98.5% at Lady Shri Ram College for Women.

In a few colleges, such as Ramjas College, the science cut-offs saw a major increase in some subject. The cut-off for Chemistry in the college was 98%, two percentage points more than last year.

Mathematics is one subject where every college either maintained the same cut-off as last year or decreased it by an average of one percentage point. Experts attributed this to the CBSE Class 12 results in Mathematics that were among the most disappointing in the past five years.

Though Sanskrit is the course with the lowest cut-off, the subject saw an increase of a minimum of two percentage points in most colleges. At Janki Devi Memorial College, the subject saw an increase from 47-52%. Hindi also saw a jump in cut-offs this year. The highest cut-off for the subject was at 92% at Hindu College.