Delhi University aspirants from city fret over making the cut

NEW DELHI: With Delhi University deciding to conduct admissions for undergraduate programmes on the basis of Class XII marks from August 2, CBSE students are wary of losing their berth. Following the cancellation of the board examination due to Covid-19, the result will be based on their performance of the past three years and the inclusion of Class XI marks, they fear, will bring their grades down.
However, most of them are also hopeful that due to the new assessment policy, the cutoffs will not be as high as previous years. In 2020, the cutoff was 100% for three courses at Lady Shri Ram College for Women.
Darshan Ram of Bluebells School International said, “There is no proper substitute for the Boards. Once the examination was cancelled, we knew that we actually have no control over the results.”
Echoing him, U Sai Sruthi, a Tagore International School, Vasant Vihar student who wishes to take psychology (H), said, “It is unfair that the admission will be based on the new marks system, which itself is unfair. This system leaves the students with no choice to better their result. CBSE students usually do not score well in Class XI.”
Competing with state board students may make it more difficult as the result criteria are not the same everywhere, said Sruthi. Ram also said the CBSE marks would be lower as it would be a culmination of the three preceding years, not just the five papers.
Central Board of Secondary Education is calculating the Class XII marks with 30% weightage to Class X board marks, 30% to Class XI marks and 40% to Class XII assessment conducted by the school. To ensure that the schools don’t inflate marks, the performance has to be moderated on the basis of a school’s results in the last three years. Unsatisfied students may get to sit for an examination later, but there’s no clarity on it yet.
“There is no assessment of individual abilities here. The whole system is so unfair for students like me who have worked so hard to better their score in Class XII,” Sruthi added, who felt that conducting an entrance would have been better. Ram, however, said adopting a centralised entrance for the first time could have delayed results.
Khurram Nayab, whose daughter studied at Delhi Public School, considered the cutoff-based admission as the best option during this unprecedented time. Vishal Srivas, a BSc (H) mathematics aspirant from the Madhya Pradesh state board, said that as over 90% of the DU applicants were from CBSE, the new assessment criteria would keep the cutoffs lower.