Perfect score precautionary measure to avoid excessive admissions, say DU college principals

New Delhi: Principals of Delhi University colleges that have kept the cut-offs at 100 per cent on Friday said the perfect score is a precautionary measure to avoid excessive admissions. The university announced its first cut-off list for undergraduate admissions on Friday with prominent colleges pegging the cut-offs at 100 per cent for various courses.

Among the colleges that have declared 100 per cent cut-off are Shri Ram College for Commerce (SRCC) for BA (Hons) Economics and BCom Honours, Hindu College and Ramjas College for Political Science Honours, SGTB Khalsa College for BCom, Hansraj College, Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies and Deen Dayal Upadhyay College for BSc(Hons) Computer Science and Jesus and Mary College for BA(Hons) Psychology and Ramjas College for a combination of BA programme.

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Apart from SRCC, which had pegged the cut-off for its hugely popular B.Com (Hons) course at 100 per cent in 2011, probably none of the above-mentioned colleges had ever kept a perfect score for admissions. Ramjas College principal Manoj Khanna said one has to take precautions in order to avoid excessive admissions.

"There are 10,000 students who have applied to Delhi University who have 100 per cent scores. Assuming that 2,000 of them might apply to our college, we have sought 100 per cent for admission to Political Science(Honours). After popular colleges, our college is also sought after for BA(Hons) Economics Honours for which we have kept the minimum requirement of marks at 99.75 per cent," he said.

The principal also opined that probably none of the colleges apart from SRCC had ever kept a perfect score for admissions. Deen Dayal Upadhyaya (DDU) College principal Hem Chand Jain concurred with Khanna and said there are nearly 1,250 aspirants who have scored cent per cent marks in their best of four subjects, including Computer Science, and they kept the cut-off at 100 per cent for the course since it is a coveted course.

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"There is a competition between DDU and Hansraj when it comes to this course. The course requires labs, which can accommodate only a certain number of people. In order to avoid over-admissions, we kept the score high. There are a total of 60 seats in the course and out of them 24 are for general category," he said.

Jain said last year they ended up admitting 250 students against 50 seats for a BA programme combination. "We have to be cautious. Also, we are in the middle of a pandemic and whenever colleges resume, we will have to keep in mind social distancing norms, which won't be possible if we end up admitting more students than the number of seats," he said. SRCC principal Simrit Kaur said there are more students who have scored 100 per cent than the sanctioned strength and it is not known which course they will opt for.

Earlier, Delhi University forms had a column where students had to list their course preferences and college preferences but it was discontinued, which means that now colleges don't have any data that could help them estimate the number of students that might apply for a particular course. Dr Jaswinder Singh, principal of Khalsa College, said there are few colleges that offer BCom programme in the university.

"There are more than 6,600 students who have scored cent per cent marks and a majority of them are those who do not have mathematics in their Best of Four and won't be able to apply for BCom (Hons) Economics (Hons) for which mathematics is needed. They would of course apply for BCom and that is why we pegged the cut-off for the course at 100 per cent to filter out students," he said.

College principals had predicted the cut-offs to soar high this year with over 70,000 students scoring above 95 per cent in Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) Class 12 board exams.

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