The admission process for around 54,000 seats in the prestigious Delhi University (DU) started on Thursday with thousands of aspirants from the city flocking to its website to fill up online applications.
This was the first time that online registration has begun a week ahead with offline applications to be accepted from June 5. Around 37,000 online forms were submitted successfully today (Thursday), varsity officials said.
The centralised optical mark recognition (OMR) forms will be available on Delhi University's website www.du.ac.in. Students will have to make the payment through Internet banking.
"We are happy that online registration took off smoothly without any major complaints from the students," said Malay Neerav, the joint dean (students' welfare) and media co-coordinator of the varsity.
The university had been experiencing several technical issues in its online registration process until last year, with its website repeatedly crashing owing to heavy demand. Authorities claimed snags were unlikely this time round.
The online registration process will continue from May 28 to June 15, while offline forms would be accepted at the registration centres from June 5 to June 15. The first cut-off list is expected to come out on June 25.
In a move set to bring cheer among students, starting this year they will not have to worry about stream-wise cut-offs anymore as the varsity has decided to do away with the system from this year.
For a long time now, DU had been announcing stream-wise cut-offs with the percentage for humanities students being the lowest and for commerce students the highest. "There will be no stream-wise cut-offs from this year. We have decided to make the cut-off uniform for students from different streams. This has been done to avoid any disadvantage to students," said J.M. Khurana, dean (students' welfare).
"For example, if the cut-off for English honours was 87-90 per cent, a student with humanities stream was able to get admission at 87 per cent and the cut-off for a science student would be slightly higher," he said. "From this year, all students will get admission on the basis of the same cut-off regardless of their stream."
Another reason for doing away with stream-wise cut-offs is the introduction of disadvantage points under which if a student is applying for honours in a subject in which he/she has not studied in Class XII, 2.5 per cent marks would be deducted from the aggregate marks of the best four subjects.
For instance, if a student wants admission in History honours but did not study history in Class XII, 2.5 per cent marks would be deducted from the best-four percentage.
However, with over 500,000 students having secured more than 90 per cent marks in CBSE Class XII examinations this year, among whom 290,000 are from Delhi alone, the cut-off marks for various colleges are expected to soar even higher than last year.
The varsity, facing flak from students' unions for not setting up any admission centre on its North Campus, has now decided to accept offline applications at the SGTB Khalsa College, besides eight centres on the South Campus - Atma Ram Sanatan Dharm College, Dyal Singh College, Gargi College, Maharaja Agrasen College, PGDAV College, Rajdhani College, Shyam Singh College and Sri Guru Gobind Singh College of Commerce are all on the South Campus.
Students' unions, including the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP)-led Dusu, National Students' Union of India (NSUI) and All India Students' Association (Aisa), had protested against the varsity's decision of not setting up any admission counter on the North Campus.
"The North Campus area is a students' hub and many admission-seekers come and stay here. It would be difficult for aspirants to commute to the South Campus just to buy and submit forms," said Manak Sharma, an NSUI representative.
Last year, the university's website had crashed on the first day of the admission process and the students had to flock to the offline registration centres.
