The most pressing issue has been the conversion of grade point average to percentage for students from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana state boards. (Express Photo by Gajendra Yadav)Admission to Delhi University against the first cut-off list has been extended by a day for those whose admissions had been held up because of various grievances, particularly for students of the Andhra Pradesh state education board. Monday was supposed to be the final date for admission under the first list.
According to students, there is a lack of coordination between their various state boards — and central boards other than CBSE such as CISCE — and the varsity. The most pressing issue has been the conversion of grade point average to percentage for students from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana state boards.
The Indian Express had Monday reported how the formula for conversion of subject-wise grade points given by the AP state board was multiplying the grade point by 10. Therefore, students with marks within the range 91 to 100, would have a grade point average of 10, which could be converted to 100. However, the university released a set of guidelines Saturday, stating that for both the AP and Telangana boards, the grade point average of 10 would be taken as 95, since it is the mid-point of the mark range. This effectively means that no student from these two boards will be considered to have more than 95% as their ‘best of four’ subjects.
After the Andhra Pradesh government wrote to the university stating that it has released marks of students concerned and requested that their admission be taken on the basis of these, DU officials said admission of students from the state will be “revisited as per the request of their state government”.
“If any admissions were based on grades, those are to be cancelled and fresh admissions may be given on the basis of marks,” read an e-mail from Rajeev Gupta, chairman of the admission committee to colleges.
A DU admission official admitted that this could swing either way for individual students: “It will be a loss for students who have taken admission with 95% but whose actual marks will turn out to be lower than that. It will be a huge advantage to those who have actually scored 98% or 99%.”
Language dilemma
Students from across education boards other than CBSE have been struggling to get admission through their elective language subjects. The revised eligibility criteria published by DU states that merit of students will be calculated based on one language and three elective/academic subjects. This year, DU has included Modern Indian Languages in its list of elective subjects, meaning that students can include another language among their three elective subjects without suffering a percentage deduction.
However, students from other boards have been finding this door closed to them in some colleges. Safwan from Malappuram district in Kerala wanted a seat in BA (Hons) English in Hindu College. He calculated his percentage with English, Biology, Chemistry and Arabic as his best of four subjects and got 96.95%. “But the college said my board’s Arabic does not qualify as an elective subject, and asked me to take my Physics marks. This lowered my percentage to 94.75%, and made me ineligible. Now I have taken admission in Ramjas College which accepted Arabic. But this is very arbitrary,” he said.
A new set of additional guidelines issued by the university states that “language subjects which contain significant amount of Literature in its contents may qualify as an elective subject”.
Officials from various boards have written to the university to clarify that these languages are elective subjects. Telangana’s Controller of Examinations wrote to the registrar on June 21 stating the board’s students study English as a core subject and can opt for either Sanskrit, Telugu, Hindi, Urdu, Arabic, French, Kannada or Marathi as an elective language. A similar letter was sent by the AP government on June 28, and by the Kerala government for Arabic, Hindi and Malayalam as elective languages as far back as June 12. On Monday, CISCE’s secretary also wrote to the registrar stating that while English is a core subject, all other subjects are electives.
An admission official said in many of these cases, colleges were not complying with guidelines of allowing students to opt for two languages in their ‘best of four’.
