St. Stephen’s College has been known to be the recipient of the crème de la crème of applications. However, this year there are lesser people fighting for those 410 seats. This year St. Stephens received 23,500 applications as opposed to the 29,672 applications it received last year.
The main perpetrator, according to the teachers has been the confusion caused by Stephens’ differentiated admissions procedure and schedule. Almost all disciplines witnessed a downfall in applications. Economics saw a 29% decrease, Mathematics 31%, English 20%, Chemistry 39%, Physics 34%, and BSc programme with chemistry 28%. For a few disciplines, the number of applications increased, like for, B.A Programme (12%), philosophy (17%), Sanskrit (39%) and BSc Programme (Computer Science 28%).
The Admissions Committee has been in quite an unpleasant position regarding St. Stephens’ admission procedure. “The Committee is of a unanimous opinion that St. Stephens and even Jesus and Mary College must follow the centralised procedure as notified by the varsity. The whole purpose of the High Court directive was to help the students skip the hassle of multiple trials. If the directive is not adhered to, then the university holds the right to withhold enrolment numbers of any student taking admission in these colleges. We have notified St. Stephens College about the same and are awaiting their response” said the Admissions Committee as told to DU Beat.
Despite the numbers, the public information officer of the college, A.D Mathur seems untroubled. “The numbers dropping by a few thousand doesn’t mean anything because 23,500 is still a huge number considering the very few seats available” said A.D Mathur as told to Times of India.
The communication from the St. Stephens has thrown people as this time it has not mentioned as it is every year that the admission process and applications are different. The dates for admissions are normally synched with those of the other DU colleges but that was not done this year either, making way for disconcerted feelings.
One of the teachers at Stephens told Times of India that a fee hike maybe a reason, also that it is important to see if it is just this college or if the number of applications have declined across the University.
On the Sports and ECA front, Delhi University has asked St. Stephens and other minority institutions to join the common admission procedure for these quotas and failing to comply will lead to their admissions being cancelled. Meanwhile, Jesus and Mary College has announced its ECA criteria.
Image Credits: indiatoday.in
Baani Kashyap
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