Long wait in queues for admission at Cotton College may be a thing of the past

June 5: Year: 2009. Place: Cotton College. Time: Admission month. But surprise, surprise. There are no snaking queues of boys and girls waiting to collect admission forms in the sweltering heat.

No, it’s not a dream but will be a reality come 2009. Students will be able to download forms of the premier institute from its website.

Cotton College principal Indra Kumar Bhattacharyya said though there has been a demand for online admission system for quite sometime, the college could not introduce it for lack of proper infrastructure.

However, the work to incorporate necessary infrastructure is on, including computerisation of all academic departments and administrative section. The college is confident of introducing the online admission system from next year, he said.

At present, the college website gives only the basic information. However, once admission forms are online, the students will have to visit the website, fill in the admission form and submit it at the click of the mouse. On being given admission, the students will be electronically notified. The list of admitted students will be generated automatically by the system thus ruling out any chance of foul play.

The decision of Cotton College will come as a big relief for thousands of students who seek admission to the century-old college, as the mundane exercise of standing in queues would be done away with. A senior teacher said the system would be particularly very helpful for students from outside Guwahati.

Sangeeta Bordoloi, a resident of Lachit Nagar, said the current admission process of city colleges was not transparent, and, therefore, leads to widespread mistakes and malpractice.

“Last year I got a shock when my son was not admitted to one of the leading colleges in the city. When I enquired, the college informed me that my son’s admission form was missing. Only after we showed the acknowledgement receipt of the admission form that the college admitted my son,” Bordoloi said.

Nupur Hazarika, a student who passed the HSLC examination this year, said, “Since I am not sure about getting admission in Cotton College I had collected forms from B. Borooah College and Srimanta Sankar Academy Junior College. The entire exercise took a lot of time as I had to visit the colleges, collect application forms and then again had to go back to submit them. I have Internet at home and the online system could have saved a lot of time.”

Dinesh Baishya, the principal of B. Borooah College, admitted the hassles faced by students because of non-existence of an online admission system and said the college has started the computerisation process. ‘The college has plans to go for an online admission system, but it cannot be said just now exactly when,” he said.

A teacher of Handique Girls’ College said it would take some time to introduce online admission system. “We are now planning to execute a scheme which will enable students to download the application form for admission from the college’s website instead of coming to the college to collect the form,” he said.