DU 2nd cutoff list 2019 out, some seats in top colleges still up for grabs

Those wishing to pursue an undergraduate degree in Economics(Hons) and English (Hons) in Delhi University — two of the most sought-after courses this year — might still be able make it.

As per the second cut-off list, announced by the varsity on Wednesday night, the courses saw a marginal drop of 0.25 to 0.50 percentage points in top DU colleges. Students can take admissions under second cut-off list till July 6.

The English (Hons) programme is still available in sought-after colleges such as Ramjas College (98%), Lady Shri Ram College (97.75%), Sri Venketeswara College (97.50%), Hansraj College (96.75%) and Gargi College (95.75%).

Students wishing to pursue Economics (Hons) could apply to Hindu College (98.25%), Kirori Mal and Ramjas College (98%), Miranda House (97.75%), and Sri Venketeswara College (97.50%).

While seats in humanities courses — history and political science — were filled up in major north campus colleges, the second cut-off indicates that seats are still up for grabs for science and commerce.

“The number of seats remaining in courses is very few except for sciences. So, for those courses, there has been a reduction in percentage in the range of 1% to 1.5% points. For most humanities courses, seats are almost full. ,” Manoj Khanna, Ramjas College principal, said.

In science courses, the drop has ranged between .25-2 percentage points in different DU colleges. For instance, in Aryabhatta college, there is a reduction of two percentage points in Computer Science (Hons) and one percentage point in Mathematics (Hons). In Sri Venkateswara, the cut-off for Chemistry (Hons) saw a drop of one percentage point whereas the cut-off for Physics (Hons) saw a drop of .67 percentage points.

In the second cut-off list, students can apply for courses like Hindi (Hons), History (Hons), BCom (Hons), and Sanskrit.

In Shri Ram College of Commerce— one of the top commerce colleges — at least 296 students had taken admission for BCom (Hons) which has over 550 seats. The second cutoff saw a marginal reduction of 0.25 percentage points.

“Like the first list, the second cut-off was also decided on the basis of data we received. We have to go with a conservative approach to ensure that there are no excess admissions,” SRCC principal Simrit Kaur said, while explaining the reduction in cut-off marks.

Principals and teachers said excessive admissions played a role in deciding second cut-offs and the need to maintain teacher-student ratio. “We have to calibrate and come up with cut-offs considering over admissions that happened in the first phase. Several popular courses had more admissions than the number of seats,” Bijayalaxmi Nanda, principal, Miranda House, said.

“In our college, there is a marginal drop in percentage for courses like Economics (Hons), Philosophy (Hons), Physics (Hons), Chemistry (Hons) under the unreserved category. In Botany (Hons), the drop is bigger with a reduction of 1.2 percentage points,” she said. The college also has some seats left in a few combinations of BA Programmes with languages.

While popular colleges saw a nominal drop in the required percentage between the two cut-offs, the off-campus colleges saw a drop as high as five percentage points. For instance, in Aditi Mahavidyalaya in Bawana, for BA (Hons) in Social work, the cut-off dropped from 83% to 78%. Only one student was admitted to the course which has 50 seats.

Till Wednesday, 23,266 applicants had taken admission in the university and 89 had cancelled it. While colleges like LSR, Kirori Mal, Miranda House saw over 1,000 admissions, off-campus colleges like Rajdhani College, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya College, Delhi College of Arts and Commerce and Motilal Nehru college sealed less than 500 admissions.