Online applicants overwhelmed by options

Updated on: Friday, June 24, 2011

Confusion continued into the third year of online junior college admissions as students and parents, forced to name 35 colleges, grappled with a problem of plenty this time. By the end of Wednesday, the first day, over 7, 500 application forms and close to 298 option forms were confirmed by the department. While the process was overall smooth sailing, the option forms proved a poser as some had problems filling in the compulsory 35 college codes. Most people didn’t know about that many colleges, said Rehana Salamat, principal of Anjuman-I-Islam Allana English High School. Many school principals were facing similar queries from parents. “In some cases students had come alone to fill their forms and they obviously don’t know about 35 colleges in their wards,” added Salamat.

The number of options was increased to 35 from five in the previous years to counter complaints that students could not get seats in colleges of their choice. Many parents thronged the office of the deputy director of education at Charni Road. “My daughter is interested in arts, but there are very few well known colleges in this stream in the city. Where do I find 35 different colleges from?” asked one parent. Many parents were worried about their forms being rejected or cancelled if they repeated college codes. “Repeating college codes won’t help the students get through that college. Instead, students should look for as many options as they can,” said an official from the deputy director’s office.

Some parents who tried to log into the website in the evening faced another problem. A parent said, “Despite filling all the details, the website kept prompting that there was an error. After we somehow reached the final page, it had only a ‘save’ tab, there was no ‘submit’ button on the page. We checked with some of my daughter’s classmates, everybody was facing a similar problem.” Another issue students raised was of the 2% Arts and Culture quota. “I have certificates in elementary and intermediate examinations (drawing) but apparently this is not considered under the quota,” said a flustered student outside Mantralaya, whose parents plan to seek a clarification on this. “Students get quota seats for participating in state and national-level competitions in music, dance or sports. Since there’s no state-level drawing competition so we dropped the quota last year itself,” said a senior Mantralaya official.

Online applicants overwhelmed by options

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