More than two-third of seats allocated by Delhi University for its undergraduate admissions have been accepted by candidates, as of Thursday evening.
While there are around 70,000 undergraduate seats on offer, the varsity has made 80,164 allocations in the first round, the results of which were shared with candidates Wednesday evening. As of 7 pm Thursday, 60,863 candidates have accepted these allocations.
Because of the apparently different levels of difficulty in the CUET in arts, commerce and science papers, the competition for seats in arts programmes is taking place at a much higher range of marks than in the science programmes.
This is best illustrated with the example of the most popular arts and science programmes at Miranda House. In unreserved seats, the highest CUET score against which a candidate has been allotted a seat in its BA (Hons) Political Science programme is 800/800 — in fact, 8 candidates who have been allotted seats in that programme have that perfect score — while the lowest score against which an allotment has been made is 787/800. In its BSc. (Hons) Physics programme, the highest score against which a seat has been allotted in the unreserved category is 518/600 and the lowest is 401/600. In percentage terms, that would mean that seat allotments closed at 99.38% in BA (Hons) Political Science and at 66.83% in BSc. (Hons) Physics. Among other popular courses, in BA (Hons) English, the highest score in unreserved seats was 800/800 and lowest was 760/800. In BA (Hons) Economics, where candidates compulsorily had to have Math as a CUET paper, the highest was 753/800 and the lowest was 715/800.
Analysis of scores candidates received to be placed in the 95 percentile for different subjects in the CUET reflect that science papers were much harder to score in: in Mathematics, the requisite score was 103.7/200 or 51.%; in Chemistry, it was 129.2 or 64.5%; in Physics, it was 105.05 or 71.3%. On the other hand, in History, it was 165.4 or 82.7%; in Economics, it was 175.8 or 87.9%; in Psychology, it was 190.9 or 95.45%.
This can be similarly seen in Kirori Mal College where in BA (Hons) Political Science, the lowest score against which an allotment has been made is approximately 774/800 (96.75%) and in BSc. (Hons) Physics, it is approximately 358/600 (59.66%).
KMC’s admissions convenor Siddhartha Lahon, who teaches Physics, remarked that the completely different marks ranges for these two popular programmes indicates that competition is likely to be out of reach for students who were in the science stream in school and want to switch to an arts or commerce programme now: DU required that candidates only write CUET in subjects they studied in school. The lowest marks against which unreserved seats were allotted in the college in BCom (Hons) is approximately 772/800 and 738/800 in English.
Data shared by other popular colleges indicates that allotments in unreserved seats in popular arts and commerce colleges have closed well above 700/800: B.Com in Ramjas College — which the highest number of candidates had selected as one of their preferences at 57,642 — closed at approximately 764/800, their B.Com (Hons) course at approximately 771/800 and their BA (Hons) Political Science programme at approximately 781/800.
At Sri Venkateswara College, allotments for unreserved seats closed at 769 for both BCom (Hons) and BA (Hons) Political Science, at 754 for BA programme and at 742 for BA (Hons) History.
In some lesser known or off-campus colleges, admissions even for these popular courses have happened in the 600-700 range. For example, in Aryabhatta College, seat allotments stopped at 692.62/800 in BA (Hons) Political Science; at 654/800 in BA (Hons) English; and 638.5/800 in BA (Hons) Economics. In Ramanujan College, it closed at 674.02/800 for BA (Hons) Political Science; at 688.8/800 for B.Com (Hons); and 633/800 for BA (Hons) Economics. However, for popular courses offered in limited colleges, they have closed high at these too. At Aryabhatta College, allotments for BA (Hons) Psychology stopped at 744.7/800 and at Ramanujan College, it closed at 728/800 for BA (Hons) Applied Psychology.
