DU applicants from CBSE increase despite 40 per cent decline in total applications

NEW DELHI: The percentage of students from CBSE seeking admission in undergraduate programmes at Delhi University has gone up by nearly 1.5 per cent as against last year, even as applicants from other state boards including Kerala and Haryana registered a considerable dip. The total number of applicants has declined by nearly 40 per cent this year.

Students from Kerala board, who are known for scoring 100 per cent marks and bagging seats at prestigious DU colleges, have dropped from 4,824 to 1,847. A nine-member panel set up by DU last year to study admission trends from various boards, had found that the number of admissions in DU from the southern board is higher than Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and Punjab state boards despite them being Delhi's neighbours. Among state boards, the percentage of students from Bihar seeking admissions at DU has doubled this year.

The admission to several sought-after programmes in DU this year are being done through Common University Entrance Test (CUET) scores instead of the traditional merit lists based on class 12 marks which without fail saw sky-rocketing cut offs in past years. The varsity has witnessed a decline of a total of 1,12,078 paid registrations this year compared to the previous year. As many as 1,75,149 students have registered for this academic session against 2,87,227 students in 2021, according to the data provided by the university. Last year, registration was open from August 2 to August 31. However, this year registration portal was opened on September 12 and closed on October 13.

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The DU began admissions for over 70,000 seats last month. Like the previous year, the maximum applications are from CBSE students. This year, the total number of applicants from the board is 1,42,473. Last year, the number of applicants was 2,29,264. If the ratio of students from CBSE board with respect to the total number of applications is compared, the number has gone up by 1.43 per cent. Last year, CBSE students accounted for over 79.8 per cent of the total applicants. In 2022, CBSE students account for 81.34 of the total applicants. This implies that though the number of applicants at Delhi University has declined, the percentage of CBSE applicants have increased.

Among state boards, the applicants from Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) have increased from 4,470 in 2021 to 5,305 in 2022. These students account for three per cent of the total applicants this year, as compared to 1.5 per cent the previous year. Meanwhile, the number of applicants from Haryana board has come down drastically from 9,918 (2021) to 1895 (2022). Last year, Haryana stood second after CBSE in terms of the number of applicants among all boards. This year, it has come down to sixth on the list. The percentage of Haryana applicants has dropped from 3.4 per cent to 1.08 per cent.

After CBSE, the maximum number of applicants are from Council for the Indian School Certificate Examination (CISCE) with 6,774, which is 2,885 less than the previous year. As many as 2,430 students from Boards of Secondary Education, Rajasthan have applied for undergraduate programmes at the varsity. This is nearly half the number of applicants (4789) from the board in 2021. Following a steady trend, only 958 students from Jammu and Kashmir State Board of School Education filled out the applications for Delhi University this year. Last year, the number of applicants was 1,806.