Good average results makes DU's first cutoff list a cut-throat competition

Colleges of Delhi University played safe as they announced an inflated cutoff list late night on Monday. The first of the five cutoff lists to be announced by Delhi University for admission to its various undergraduate courses across colleges witnessed a new high in sought-after courses like BCom (honours), BA (honours) in economics, English and history and BSc (honours) in physics and chemistry.

With hardly a few percentage left for a perfect 100% cutoff, many popular colleges like Shri Ram College of Commerce, Lady Shri Ram College and Sri Venkateswara exercised restrain, while others went all out hiking the cutoffs upto 11% in courses like BA (honours) in history. And for science students who decided to join a regular degree course instead of any professional course might have to rethink as Monday's cutoffs have witnessed increase up to 10%.

Though SRCC stayed away from a 100% cutoff for its BCom (honours) course, it registered 96.5% for commerce aspirants and 98.5% for others. LSR's BCom cutoff remained unchanged at 97% this year. Even Sri Venkateswara College has maintained its 97% to 98% as the cutoff range for BCom (h) -- higher than SRCC -- while registering comparatively marginal increase in the rest of the courses. Despite just one admission in the first list last year, Kirori Mal College continued to be extra cautious by posting 96.75% as the cutoff for BCom (honours). DU sources said the cutoffs in BCom (honours) and BCom programme is expected to drop by as much a 5% in the second list in outside the campus colleges.

Some of the courses witnessing the big jump this year are BA (honours), BA (honours) English, BSc (honours) mathematics and BSc (honours) physics (h), among others.

In sciences the cutoffs for BSc (honours) in physics and chemistry at SGTB Khalsa College remained the same as last - 92% and 90% respectively. However, the college has hiked the cutoff for BA programme by 8%, English (h) and history (h) by 7% each.

Ramjas has increased the cutoff for BA (honours) history by 11%, which means for a humanities candidate admission in the first list opens at 91% or more. Even in BSc (honours) chemistry Ramjas has hiked it by 10.5%. Gargi College and Maitreyi College too are not far behind Ramjas, increasing their BA (honours) history cutoff by a whopping 10%.

College authorities say that though they have come up with a an 'unrealistic' cutoffs and will drop in the subsequent list by upto 5%, they resorted to high cutoffs to avoid admissions beyond their capacity.

First cutoff admissions begins on Tuesday, June 26 and will continue till June 28, 2012. The second cutoff will be declared on June 28, 2012 and students will be able to access it at midnight at DU's official website.