BENGALURU: The move of colleges introducing different cut-off marks for girls and boys seeking admission to Pre-University (PU) courses has not gone down well with several students and parents. Fixing a higher cut-off puts girls at a disadvantage, they argue.
At least three top co-education colleges that TOI spoke with, however, justified the practice while confirming the trend is in all three streams (science, commerce and arts). For example, ICSE board students applying for a commerce course at
Christ College have 92.17% cut-off for girls as opposed to 85.33% for boys.
“I got 75% in ICSE exam and want to study arts in pre-university. I rushed to apply at Christ but I’m ineligible because the cut-off is 78% to study arts with combination of history, economics, social science and political science. For boys, it is 73.67%. I’m now trying to get admission at St Joseph’s Arts and Science College,” said a dyslexic student.
Christ PU College principal Fr
Sebastian Mathai, however, said different cut-offs are in place only to ensure that there are equal number of boys and girls in any class.
“We’re following the government instruction to enrol equal number of boys and girls in a class in every stream. Since girls have been performing better than the boys, the same cut-off would mean that each class will have more girls. Separate cut-off list is to ensure that 50% of them are boys in all classes (subject combination-wise),” he said.
Jain College in VV Puram, which received 13,000 applications for admission to PU courses, said 8,000 of these were from girls. The cut-off for boys in science is 88% compared to 89% for girls. BT Venkatesh, director of Jan College, said: “The number of applications from girls is higher. Hence, we have different cut-offs for boys and girls, so as to be fair and have equal number of boys too.”
St Joseph’s College of Commerce, has a different problem—more number of boys applying than girls.
“The cut-off for boys is 85% and 90% for girls. We do not follow this strictly because we have more applications from boys who are studying in affiliated schools in the St Joseph’s institutions. It compels us to give more preference to girls because they are scoring good marks,” Fr Prashanth Madtha, director of the institution, said.
He said there are more exclusive colleges for girls than boys, which gives girls more opportunities. However, St Joseph’s College (Arts and Science) claimed that it has not set differential cut-offs.
—With input from Sanjana Pai and Mrinalini M Bhat
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