The most number of applications — 1,26,327 — were received for the English (Hons) course, which is offered in 48 of 63 colleges in the university.
The competition is fierce. For each seat in the BA (Hons) journalism course in Delhi University, there are 348 contenders; for Psychology (Hons), the number stands at 159; and for English (Hons), it is 55.
The number of applications for each course at the undergraduate level was released by the Delhi University on Tuesday.
The most number of applications — 1,26,327 — were received for the English (Hons) course, which is offered in 48 of 63 colleges in the university.
“For English (Hons), everybody wants to apply as there are social factors involved… But most students don’t know that it involves studying literature,” said Gurpreet Singh Tuteja, deputy dean students welfare (DSW).
Journalism (Hons) is offered in only six colleges, and there are 229 seats on offer. Last year, too, the course was among top 10 most sought after. Psychology (Hons), which has been gaining traction over the last few years, is offered in just 11 colleges, with a total 475 seats on offer.
A journalism teacher at Kamala Nehru College said applications for this course have increased as candidates see the job potential afterwards. “Students feel that journalism has a direction and there is some sense of job security,” she said.
Overall, DU has 56,000 seats, while over 2 lakh applications have been received. This, teachers say, means the cut-offs are set to be higher for these courses. Last year, when BA programme had the highest number of applications, the first cut-off stood at 97% at Hansraj College. For English, the cut-off in the first list was 98.75% at SGTB Khalsa College.
For Political Science (Hons), which has the third highest number of applications, close to 37 students are fighting for one seat. Among science courses, BSc (Hons) Mathematics and BSc (Hons) Chemistry are the most popular, with 35 and 66 contenders for each seat respectively.
With inputs from Sukrita Baruah