Updated on: Thursday, June 27, 2013
Ram Lal Anand has done an SRCC this year. The college set the cutoff for its computer science course at a perfect 100% (for non-science aspirants), just like SRCC had done in 2011, as Delhi University declared the first cutoffs for admission to undergraduate course. The cutoffs, for inexplicable reasons, were released very late on Wednesday night.
Although it's an all new undergraduate programme in the university from this year and number of seats in many courses has risen significantly, the legacy of high cutoffs continues. That is true particularly for courses such as Journalism and English, for which students were earlier admitted through centralized entrance tests. Cutoffs touched a new high for both courses, with Lady Shri Ram setting the bar at 97.5%-98.5% for Journalism and Hindu at 97.75%-98.5% for English — equaling those of Economics and Commerce.
Overall, securing a seat in a DU college would gets even harder despite many popular colleges trying not to raise the bar too high. Cutoffs in off-campus colleges continue to rise significantly, with some colleges registering an increase of 14%.
At the 20-odd colleges that used to admit students for English honours through a centralized aptitude test, even students with average scores stood a chance. But not this time. With the entrance test for Journalism and English gone, cutoffs have hit the roof. While LSR's journalism cutoff touches those of both bachelors in commerce and economics, at Delhi College of Arts and Commerce it is 97.5%.
Similarly, the cutoff for English at LSR is 97%, at Hindu it is 97.75%-98.5% and at DCAC it is 95%. All three were CATE colleges where students scoring 60% in class XII could were eligible for the entrance test.
Even for non-CATE colleges, English seats have got dearer with Deshbandhu's cutoff spiraling by 10% to 85%. At ARSD, it is 90%, up by 6%. Seven out of the eight North Campus colleges — such as Hansraj, Kirori Mal, Miranda House, Ramjas, Daulat Ram and IP College — have set the cutoff for English at more than 92%.
Though commerce continues to record high cutoffs in the most campus colleges, there are off-campus colleges and Daulat Ram which have lowered the bar by as much as 3% (Laxmi Bai). Hindu recorded the highest cutoff in the subject, higher even than that of SRCC, at 96.75-99.75.