Want to join DU? Check out how cutoffs are calculated

Explaining how the cut-offs are calculated, Nachiketa Singh, member, DU Standing Committee on Admissions, says, “The college admission committee examines the histogram of the applicants to a subject given by the university.

Explaining how the cut-offs are calculated, Nachiketa Singh, member, DU Standing Committee on Admissions, says, “The college admission committee examines the histogram of the applicants to a subject given by the university. After that, based on the popularity of the subject in the college and past experience, we have a multiplication factor. This means, multiplication factor is multiplied by the total number of applicants in a given cut-off percentage. If the number thus calculated is less than the total number of seats for a specific subject in a college, that becomes our cut-off.”

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For instance, if the multiplication factor for English (hons) in a particular college is 0.5 and it is multiplied by the total number of applicants (100) in a given cut-off percentage (98%). The result is 50, which is less than the number of seats for that course (55) in the college, would mean that the cut-off becomes 98%.

Factors such as the total number of applicants scoring above a certain percentage, number of seats, popularity of a subject and previous trends are taken into account while calculating cut-offs.

It will be difficult to derive the cut-offs since there will be no stream-wise cut-offs this time, says Anju Srivastava, officiating principal, Hindu College.

“The first cut-off is kept a little higher than that of the previous year and the subsequent ones by gradually lowering them. This year’s cut-offs may be 0.5% to 1% higher than last year,” says SK Garg, principal Deen Dayal Upadhyay College.

Citing an example of how cut-offs were calculated till last year, Rudrashish Chakraborty, member, Delhi University Academic Council says, “If a college gets 300 applications from students from across streams for the first list in a particular course, then the candidates are divided equally across three streams. So the percentage of every 100th candidate becomes the cut-off for commerce, science and humanities.”

Chakraborty, however, says that this year the university has decided on “strange guidelines” for admission and cut-offs. “According to one of the rules, if a student has not studied a particular subject but wants to pursue honours in that subject, he will be penalised. If a student decided to change his stream, he will be at a disadvantage. How can a student be penalised when the university is gearing up to implement the choice-based credit system? This means that there is no consistency in policy making.”