First cut-offs high: Little hope for future correction

Updated on: Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Overall HSC pass percentages dipped by over 6% in the state this year, but cut-offs for the first merit list in various city colleges have actually increased on an average of 1.5% in almost all courses. Principals said there was a steep rise in the popularity of professional courses like biotechnology, Bachelor of Mass Media (BMM) and Bachelor in Management Studies (BMS) with the corresponding increase in available career opportunities.

“We have received more applications for professional courses like BMS and Bachelors in Accounting and Finance (BAF) owing to the higher job opportunities available in the field,” said Tukaram Appaya Shiware, principal, Hinduja College of Commerce. Traditional courses across city colleges are bearing the brunt of this with very few students opting for them. “Traditional courses like BA and BSc have witnessed a decline in the number of applications,” said BB Sharma, principal, Kelkar College. Some courses are gaining dominance over others even within streams. Biotechnology proved very popular in Kelkar College, pushing the cut off to 84 per cent. It received maximum applications, followed by IT and Bsc. Other colleges too have seen an increase in the number of applicants.

“The cut-off has gone higher in some cases. In our college we base it on the number of applications that we get. For BSc (IT), our cutoff is down by two marks while for courses like computer science it has gone up, but only by 1-2%,” said Tushar Desai, principal of DG Ruparel College. It’s a similar story in Bandra’s RD National College. “We are receiving thousands of applications for almost all our courses. Within BSc, computer science is more popular than biotech or IT. The cutoffs are 2-3% higher than last year,” said principal Dinesh Panjwani.

To make matters worse, some college heads are also predicting that the cut-offs at top colleges might come down only marginally in the remaining merit lists. “We had a lot of applications coming from Delhi this year and to our surprise, most of those students confirmed their admission. I believe the cut-offs might not change too much in the remaining lists,” said Indu Shahani, principal of HR College, Churchgate. The cut-offs at HR too increased by almost 2-3% as compared to last year.

First cut-offs high: Little hope for future correction

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