ADMISSION RESTRICTED: Girls brave the sun and the heat to wait in a queue outside a north Calcutta college for admission forms on Monday. The websites of most colleges, from which students were supposed to download admission forms, either remained inaccessible all day or crashed because of the heavy traffic. Picture by Amit Datta

Being in line was more productive than being online on Day I of the big summer admission rush.

Websites of most colleges that were distributing entry forms online could not handle the heavy traffic or displayed messages like “This page is under construction”, as was the case with web pages that were to carry the Madhyamik results last Wednesday.

Students who wanted to apply for admission to Presidency, Bethune, Scottish Church, Lady Brabourne and Heramba Chandra (South City College) were the most frustrated because none of these colleges was distributing forms over the counter.

“I have not been able to get into the sites of most colleges. I have been trying since morning and the message I get is that the pages are under construction,” said a student who passed out of South Point.

The switch to online distribution of forms was triggered by complaints about harassment and irritatingly long queues in front of colleges. Half a dozen institutions went online last summer and several more joined the bandwagon this year.

But instead of making the traditionally tedious task of collecting an admission form easier for students and parents, technological glitches actually made it harder. Some landed up at colleges after trying unsuccessfully to access the websites, only to be told that there would be no manual distribution from this year.

“If you are in a queue, you know that you will reach the counter sooner or later and get the form. But here the wait doesn’t end and you don’t know when you will be able to download the forms,” said Shaoli Roy, emerging from a cyber café on Surya Sen Street.

The principal of Presidency College, Sanjib Ghosh, said his office had received complaints from students about not being able to access one of the sites, www.presidencyadmission.net. “Forms can alternatively be downloaded from www.collegeadmission.in. We are trying our best to rectify the fault in our website as early as possible so that students are able to access both sites.”

Forms of other colleges, too, can be downloaded from www.collegeadmission.in.

While officials of Bethune were unavailable for comment, the principal of Lady Brabourne denied that the website of her institution was inaccessible for the better part of the day. “We have received no complaint. Everything has gone smoothly,” Sanghamitra Mukherjee said.

The websites of Bethune and Shri Shikshayatan College contain all the information that a student would want to have about the admission process, but no link from which to download the forms.

Asutosh College, Bijoy Krishna Girls’ College, Howrah, and Women’s Christian College did not face trouble because they distributed forms over the counter for those who did not have access to the Internet.

A teacher of a north Calcutta college blamed poor programming and website design for the chaos. “Most of the colleges that are offering forms online either constructed the sites themselves or hired small agencies to do it.”

The websites of IITs, IIMs and the other top technical institutions receive heavy traffic but never crash.