Ninety is the new 80 in college admissions with students who have scored even a shade less being forced to settle for second-choice institutions and subjects.

“I have just learnt that I did not make the cut for economics honours at both Scottish Church College and Asutosh College despite scoring above 88 per cent in my board exams. I am praying that I will get a seat in economics or chemistry at Lady Brabourne College on June 26,” Saimanti Dutta, who passed the plus-two exams from Ashok Hall School, told Metro on Monday.

In the top-rung colleges, only those who have scored in the 90s apparently stand a chance of getting a seat in the departments of their choice. English, geography and journalism and mass communication are the pop picks in humanities along with chemistry, physics, computer science and math in the science stream.

“The rush for seats in subjects like English, geography and journalism is more than what we had expected. It is unfortunate that we have to deny seats to many bright students,” said Manjusha Tarafdar, the principal of Jogamaya Devi College.

Students from the central plus-two boards are again set to bag the lion’s share of seats in top-rung colleges, elbowing out their Higher Secondary counterparts on the strength of a dynamic scoring system with which the state council has failed to keep pace.

High scorers in the CBSE and ISC exams far outnumber Higher Secondary students in the seat stakes in colleges like St Xavier’s, Loreto, Presidency, Lady Brabourne, Scottish Church, Bethune and Jadavpur University this admission season, confirmed officials.

Although this isn’t a new trend, this time the disappointment has been compounded by a 1.3 per cent drop in the Higher Secondary success rate for the first time in five years.

“I am not even in contention for a seat in the zoology department of Scottish Church College and Dinabandhu Andrews College, where I had applied. In Asutosh College, I am 1,498th on the waiting list,” said a student from Ballygunge Shiksha Sadan, who scored 70.5 per cent in Higher Secondary.

So does it mean that the state council isn’t doing enough to establish parity in syllabus and examinations?

A comparative analysis following the declaration of the Higher Secondary results on May 28 proved that there were still several differences between the syllabi followed by the state and the central boards, particularly in the science subjects.

Higher Secondary students also get less multiple-choice questions and short answer-type questions than their ISC and CBSE counterparts, an official said.