This year, a total of 367 applicants are vying for a single seat in the BA Journalism (Hons) course in Delhi University colleges. Data provided by the varsity shows that the course is witnessing the highest competition, with as many as 1,12,233 applications received for the 306 available seats in the course.

In terms of the number of applications, BA English (Hons) was the most popular course this year — the university has received 1,42,970 applications for admission into the course. However, unlike BA Journalism (Hons) — which is taught in seven DU colleges — 46 colleges offer BA English (Hons) and the total number of seats available stands at 2,477. This means, 58 applicants are vying for a single seat for admission into the course.

A day after the registration process was closed Saturday night, the varsity revealed that they have received as many as 2,58,388 applications for the 62,000 seats available for undergraduate courses.

Tarjeet Sabharwal, who teaches at Delhi College of Arts and Commerce (DCAC), said the journalism course should be taught in more colleges with the required infrastructure, considering it has so much demand. “Only two co-educational colleges offer the course. The rest five are all-women colleges. This is the main reason why the competition is so high for the course,” he said.

Last year, there were 348 contenders per seat in the BA Journalism (Hons) course. The highest cut-off for the course was fixed at 98.5% by the DCAC.

Students, who are presently enrolled in the course, said the growing demand for the course is because of its professional nature. Tripta Singh Naveen, a third-year student at Maharaja Agrasen College, who chose to study the course over English and BCom, said, “I wanted to pursue my career in media industry and that’s why chose this course. Most of us pursuing BA Journalism (Hons), however, are aware that there are not many job opportunities in big media houses for fresh graduates. But this is among few professional courses being offered at DU.”

Besides, DU also offers 120 seats in the integrated five-year programme from the Delhi School of Journalism. Candidates have to appear for an entrance exam to get a seat in the course at the institute.

Similarly, competition is tough in BA Sociology (Hons) and BA Psychology (Hons), wherein 232 and 202 applicants, respectively, are vying for a seat. The situation is marginally better in BA Geography (Hons), with 176 applicants fighting for a single seat.

The number of applications has increased in many sought after courses this year. Compared to last year, the university has, this year, received applications from around 20,000 more candidates for BA English (Hons). Moreover, the varsity has received around 30,000 more applications as compared to last year for BA Political Science (Hons) course. Similarly, the number of applications has increased in BA Sociology (Hons) and BA Psychology (Hons) by 36,831 and 36,817, respectively, from last year.

Officials in the admission committee said the number of applications is higher in many sought after courses this year because of a change in the application form. “This year, the application forms had all the courses automatically selected and the candidates had to deselect the ones they were not interested in. It seems that a large number of applicants have applied for multiple courses,” said a member of the admission committee.

The figures show the initial cut-offs will be fairly high in most of these courses. “The cut-off is unlikely to go down in any of these courses. It will continue to remain between 96.5% and 98.5%,” the official said.

Meanwhile, BA (Programme) has continued to attract a large number of aspirants, with the varsity receiving as many as 1,25,519 applications for the 11,172 seats available. BA (programme) had highest cut-off among all the courses last year – 98.75%.

Rama Sharma, principal of Hansraj College, said that BA (programme) emerged as the most demanding course in the last year because of the “diversity” it offers. “The students study four subjects here instead of majoring in one. So, after they graduate, they have the option to pursue higher studies in multiple disciplines instead of one,” she said.

Students want to pursue sports or any extra-curricular activity considered it as the best option. “For people like us who want to pursue sports, honours courses require more time and focus towards academics. In BA (programme), we can also study varied disciplines like physical education and understand how our body functions or how to get over injuries,” said 19-year-old Neetu Kasana, a national-level badminton pursuing the course at Hansraj College.

First Published: Jun 25, 2019 07:39 IST