Bifocal course seats in coveted colleges vacant

A handful of seats for science and commerce bifocal streams in coveted colleges in the city are vacant even after the second round. Wednesday was the last day for students who had made it to the second merit list of colleges to secure provisional admission.

The bifocal courses are quite popular as students can drop one language and study one vocational subject instead. While 11 seats are vacant at Ruparel College; Ruia College, Jai Hind College and Mithibai College have 8, 6, 6 seats vacant respectively.

“I don’t know why it happens, but every year a few seats remain vacant,” said Jyoti Thakur, a junior college coordinator at Jai Hind. “It’s contradictory — on one hand you have students vying for these seats, and on the other you have students who make it to the list but don’t take admission.”

This year 8,127 students secured provisional admission to the bifocal streams after two rounds. More than 3,000 seats are still lying vacant. Education department officials said most vacant seats would be in schools or junior colleges that no one listed as their preferences in the application form.

Depending on the number of vacancies, and if students meet the cut-offs they will be able to apply for the vacant seats on an offline basis once the online procedure is completed.

“Colleges will not accept new applications, but will conduct the admissions internally, for those students who have been admitted to the college but may now want to change their course,” SR Chouhan, deputy director of education, Mumbai had earlier said.