Cutoffs for university admissions are likely to rise this year

Updated on: Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Cutoffs for university admissions are likely to rise this year as more Class XII students have scored in the high 90s. There's a 37% increase in students with more than 90% marks, and a 62% increase in those with more than 95%. Altogether 44,676 students have scored 90% and higher in the Class XII CBSE boards, and their best-of-four aggregate for undergraduate admissions is likely to be even higher as 701 students have scored a per-fect 100 in maths, 1,498 have scored 96% and above in English, and 754 have scored 98% and above in physics.

Sources say most colleges will set the cut-offs in their first lists above 95%. If St Stephen's cutoff for economics (H) was 98% last year, it could be higher this time despite the additional seats. Valson Thampu, princi-pal of the college, said the only way to tackle the absurdly high cutoffs is to build more institutions of excellence. "In a country of 1.2 billion, there should have been 5,000 more St Stephen's colleges. What is happening to the education cess collected from us? Why can't the government establish more institutions so that aspirations of the youth can be respected?" Thampu said, adding, cutoffs will get stiffer though there is not much room to go beyond 98%. "It is not our choice, but our agonizing compulsion to keep them high.

This time, scores in subjects like political science, English, psychology, sociology, geog-raphy, business studies, accountancy, physics and biology have also shot up. Monday's result shows that not only the number of merit cer-tificates but also the qualifying marks for them have increased.

Cutoffs for university admissions are likely to rise this year

More Education news