At Fergusson College, the cut-off for Arts seats dropped by three marks, to 476 in Round II from 479 in Round I. (Representational image)
The increasing demand among students for a career in humanities became evident after the cut-offs of the second round of the Centralised Admission Process (CAP) were declared on Saturday; the cut-offs for the Arts stream were even higher than the science stream in most top colleges across the city. In fact, at some city colleges, the cut-off for Arts seats in the second round of CAP admissions are almost the same as the first round.
For example, at Shivaji Nagar’s Modern College, the cut-off for Round II was 457 marks, the same as Round I. At Symbiosis College, the cut-off for Round II was 473 marks, a mere drop of one mark, compared to its cut-off of 474 marks in Round I. A clear trend that has emerged from the admission rounds is the clear preference of students for Arts and the decreasing demand for Science seats. In most of the top colleges, the cut-offs for Arts seats either exceeded the cut-off for Science seats or in some cases, were close behind those of Science seats.
“This year, the Class X results were quite good and there were many high-scorers. Also, from this year, students have the option of changing their preference after every list and many high-scoring students may have switched their choice of college or even stream… which could have resulted in the cut-off remaining high,” said Dinkar Temkar, deputy director of education, Pune.
At Fergusson College, the cut-off for Arts seats dropped by three marks, to 476 in Round II from 479 in Round I. Yet, the cut-offs remained high compared to the Science stream seats, whose cut-off for Round II was 474, a sharp drop from the 482 mark cut-off in Round I.
Principals say that the near-constant cut-off for Arts and the sharp drop in marks for Science seats shows the rising trend of students opting for Arts seats, especially the top-rankers. “… The seats for Arts, especially English, are fewer… we have seen that most of the times, the cut-off is very high because many high-scoring students are opting for these subjects due to future prospects like preparing for the civil services…,” said Principal Rajendra Zunjarrao from Modern College, Shivaji Nagar.
