Slow server.
Poor Intermediate pass percentage.
Low Internet penetration in rural areas.
Not all have credit or debit cards for online payment.
The reasons are many and the result is hardly encouraging for online admission form fill-up in Patna University in its first such attempt this year.
Only 15,929 applications were received till June 13, the last date for filling up the forms, against last year's figure of around 30,000 when the process was offline.
Students and teachers blame the tedious process, which started on May 30, for low application numbers. Uday Bhaskar, a candidate who has applied for mathematics UG course at Patna Science College, said: "There was confusion among candidates. A candidate had to register twice - first on Patna University website, which would assign a registration number; and then on the desired college website with the registration number."
He claimed that despite guidelines were given how to fill the form, many candidates committed mistake by registering only on the varsity website or directly filling up admission form on the college website.
Echoing the views of student, Patna Science College principal U.K. Sinha said in the past two days, he has received several complaints from students and their parents over confusion in filling up admission forms. Sinha said: "Many parents and students had the impression that applying on either university website or college website will serve the purpose. Many applications were rejected because of this confusion."
This year, Patna Science College received 4,400 applications against last year's around 8,000. Similarly, Patna College received 1,780 applications against 3,500 last year.
The other reason for low applicants was that students had to face slow server connectivity both on the Patna University website and those of different colleges. Sources said it took hours for a student to download the application form and even hours while uploading the completed form.
Mukesh Kumar, a candidate who has applied for Patna College, said: "The other hurdle while making online application form was that a student has to make online payment through a credit or debit cards. Candidates without a credit or debit cards had to pay directly at Union Bank after submitting a challan. In this way, a candidate has to make both online application and offline payment."
However, the Patna University administration feels that apart from tedious admission form filling process and slow server connectivity, the other reason behind less number of candidates applying for colleges was this year's Intermediate (Class XII) result was poor compared to previous years.
Patna University pro-vice-chancellor R.K. Verma said: "As the Intermediate results was poor this year, the actual number of candidates applying for different courses was already less."
This year, the pass percentage in Intermediate science was 67.06 per cent against last year's 89.32. Only 21.77 per cent students secured first division in comparison to last year's 49.17. A total of 1.3 million students had appeared in the Intermediate exam this year and the corresponding figure was 1.2 million (approximately) last year.
The sources said that another reason behind less number of applicants was a large number of students used to apply at the university from rural areas. They are not much comfortable with the online process.
Anil Paswan, who has applied at Patna College, said: "I come from a remote village at Tekari in Gaya district. As I am not computer-savvy, I found difficulties in applying online as the candidate has to create his own email id, upload photographs and filling up form which was a bit confusing."
A senior teacher at PU on condition of anonymity said: "In the past few years, Patna University has lost its image because of group clash among students and their anti-academic activities."
The entrance test will be held next week for different courses while the results will be declared in the first week of July.
