St Stephen’s College raises cut-offs in humanities courses, slight dip in science

St. Stephen’s College, usually the first to release its cut-off list that sets the tone for other institutions in Delhi University, announced a slight increase in the humanities courses compared to last year on Monday evening. For science courses, however, there was a slight dip from 2017’s cut-offs.

The highest cut-offs were for Economics (Hons) at 98.75% for Commerce students, and 98% and 97.5% for Humanities and Science students respectively. Last year, the cut-offs for the three streams were 98.5%, 97.5% and 97.5%. The highest dip, five percentage points, was for Sanskrit (Hons), with the subject being available at 65% for students from all streams. Last year, it was available at 70% in the first list.

St Stephen’s college, which always releases different cut-offs for students from different streams, had been seeing a dip in cut-offs for the last two years.

The college, which reserves 50% seats for Christians by virtue of being a minority institution, conducts an aptitude test and an interview for applicants who meet the cut-off. In its final selection criteria, applicants are given 85% weightage for their Class 12 marks, 5% for the aptitude test and 10% for the interview.

The interviews are starting from June 18.

For English (Hons), the cutoff is 97.5%, which is .25 percentage points up from last year’s 97.25 % for humanities students.

The cut-off for Science and Commerce students is 98% and 98.5% respectively – the same as last year.

The cut-off for History (Hons), too, has seen a jump of 0.25-1 percentage points across different streams.

But the first cut-off for Chemistry (Hons) dropped to 96% from last year’s 96.33%; for Physics (Hons) it remained the same as last year at 97.33%; and went up 0.5 percentage points for Mathematics (Hons) across streams.

The first cut-off list of the other Delhi University colleges are expected on June 19.

The highest cut-off in that list last year was 99% for Political Science (Hons) at the SGTB Khalsa College.

The marks required for entry reduce in subsequent cut-off lists but it has become increasingly difficult for students to get courses of their choice at DU with a score of under 95% in their Class 12 Board exams.