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DU first cut-off released, 100% needed for three courses in LSR
Delhi University on Saturday announced its first cut-off list for admissions to undergraduate courses with the Lady Shri Ram (LSR) College fixing 100% for admission to honours courses in Political Science, Economics and Psychology.
The Delhi University on Saturday announced its first cut-off list for admissions to undergraduate courses with the Lady Shri Ram (LSR) College fixing 100% for admission to honours courses in Political Science, Economics and Psychology.
DU Admission Cutoff 2020 Live Updates
This is after a gap of five years that colleges in DU have announced a cent per cent cut-off. In 2015, two colleges – College of Vocational Studies and Indraprastha College for Women – had fixed their cut-offs at 100% for BSc (Honours) in Computer Science.
Like the past few years, BA (Honours) in Political Science, English, History, and Psychology emerged as one of the most sought-after courses, with cut-offs in the 95-99% range. “There has been a growing interest towards liberal arts and humanities courses over the past few years. While choosing inter-disciplinary papers also, the applicants go for History and Political Science more often than Science subjects. Students feel there are more avenues of opportunities in Humanities. There is also a bilingual factor because students can attempt papers in Hindi for Humanities – an option not available for Science stream subjects,” said Anju Shrivastava, principal of Hindu College.
The cut-offs across colleges this year are 0.5-2 percentage points higher than the last year. In 2019, the highest cut-off was announced by Hindu College for BA (Honours) in Political Science at 99%.
BA (Hons) in English, the highest cut-off announced by Miranda House and LSR at 99%. LSR has also announced the highest cut-off for BA (Hons) in History is 99.5% and BCom (Hons) at 99.75%. In science courses, Hindu College announced the highest cut-off for BSc in Physics at 99.33% and mathematics at 99%.
The admission process at DU has been delayed by more than three months due to the ongoing coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic. Last year, the first cut-off was announced on June 28.
Majority of the colleges have set the cut-offs for popular courses such as BA (Hons) in Political Science, Economics, History, English, B Com (Hons); and BSc in Mathematics, Physics and Statistics between 95-100%.
LSR principal Suman Sharma said the college has announced a 100% cut-off for the first time. “The cut-offs for the admissions are decided on the basis of an analysis of the profile and data of the applicants. In addition, several other local factors such as the number of seats available in different courses and past experience are also taken into account,” she said.
DU officials said admissions under the first cut-off will be conducted between Monday and Wednesday; and the second cut-off list will be released on October 19. The university is expected to release five cut-offs followed by a special cut-off this year.
At Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC), one of the most sought-after Commerce colleges in the country, cut-offs have gone up marginally for B Com (Honours) at 99.5% and BA (Honours) in Economics at 99%. Last year, the cutoffs for the same courses were 98.50% and 98.75%.
Last year, the highest cut-off was announced by Hindu College for BA (Honours) in Political Science at 99%. The college has further increased the cut-off for the same course by 0.50 percentage points this year. For BSc (Hons) in Physics and Chemistry, the college has kept the cut-offs at 99.33% and 98.33% – up by one percentage point.
Officials across the colleges cite two major reasons behind the increase in cut-off this year --- increase in the number of applications and unavailability of course-wise applicants data. Unlike previous years, students were allowed to apply for all courses this year, leaving colleges without data on number of applicants per course.
Anju Shrivastava said, “Since the registration was open for all courses we studied last year’s trends while deciding the cut-offs. Though there were suggestions to fix 100% for some courses, we decided to keep it at 99.5%.”
Officials said DU received 354,003 applications, the highest ever, for around 70,000 undergraduate seats this year.
Explaining why the university has got a record number of applicants this year, officials said since the registration window was open for 10 weeks instead of the usual three weeks due to the delay in the results of board examinations amid the pandemic, applicants who had applied for entrance-based professional courses had also applied to the university as a “backup option.”
Several principals said this is why colleges set the cut-offs higher to counter “over-admissions”. In Delhi University, colleges are supposed to offer admission to all applicants who meet the cut-off criteria. There is no first-come, first-serve policy. Many times colleges need to increase the number of seats to accommodate all eligible students.
At Miranda House, the cut-off for BA (Honours) in English and Political Science has been set at 99% -- an increase of 1.5 and 1 percentage point over last year. For BSc (Honours) in Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry, the cut-offs are 98.75%, 98%, and 97.33% – up by around one-two percentage points compared to 2019.
Bijayalaxmi Nanda, acting principal at Miranda House, said, “From a cursory glance at the raw registration data, around 830 applicants had 100% and 520 had 99%, necessitating marginally higher cut-offs at our college. In fact, most colleges have kept the first cut-offs on the higher side to avoid admission beyond capacity.”
The high cut-offs are also a manifestation of the number of high scorers in CBSE Class 12 board exams increasing exponentially this year. This is significant since a majority of applications (285,128) received by the university are from CBSE board. While the number of CBSE students scoring 95% and above increased by 118.6% this year, those getting 90% and above went up by 67.48%.
“The second list is the one to watch out for. Results for various entrance exams are out and students may also have taken admission in their local universities during this period. So, after the admissions under the first cut-off list are concluded, we will get a better picture,” Nanda said.
Gurpreet Singh Tuteja, former Dean of Students at DU, said the university’s decision of not deducting any mark while switching the stream this year also played a role in higher the cut-offs. “Unlike previous years, where there would be a percentage point deduction if the applicant switched from one stream to another, this year students can take admission in any stream without any deduction of masks. This increases the chances of over admissions. Colleges played safe and fixed higher cut-offs,” he said.
