Fourth list cancelled, offline process for rest

The education department will not declare a fourth and final general merit list for those students who were not allotted a seat through the online admission process. Bhavya Dore and Sucharita Kanjilal reports.

The education department will not declare a fourth and final general merit list for those students who were not allotted a seat through the online admission process.

HT Image

The 5,191 students who did not get placed in any college through the online admission process will now have to apply for offline admissions, which will be held on August 12 and 13.

“The two days allotted for offline admissions are too short a time for us to apply to so many colleges. Only those who want to apply to one or two colleges will find this convenient,” said Sumaiya Mandal, 16, a resident of Wadala.

On Monday, the department had said it would conduct a special allocation round and announce a final merit list on Friday for the students who were not allotted seats in any college. However, on Tuesday, the department decided to cancel the final list.

“We felt that having a fourth list would be a violation of the procedure,” said an education department official.

“Students who did not make it anywhere can now contact their guidance centres for help and directly apply offline to colleges.”Last year, a similar confusion had occurred, when the department found that 4,000-odd students did not have a seat even after three general merit lists.

This year, the redesigned online application form, which required students to list 35 college options, was meant to preempt this problem, but does not seem to have worked.

Students have other grievances with the online process. Many are unhappy with the single betterment option, They have not been able to avail of the ‘betterment option’ after the third merit list came out, because they exhausted it in the second round itself.

As a result, though cut-offs dropped in the third round, they were unable to get into higher preference colleges.

“My cousin got 92.73% and should have got into Ruia College where the cutoff was 91% but had already used the betterment option so he did not make it,” said a student’s relative.