Pune: Race heats up for seats in top colleges & popular courses

PUNE: Junior college principals are anticipating a tough competition among students for contemporary courses including arts, science and commerce apart from a cut throat contest in popular colleges in the city as a result of higher pass percentages and improved number of students falling in 95% and above category.
Colleges have also demanded additional seats on an unaided basis to overcome the high demand of applications. The FYJC admissions are set to begin from Monday.

Principal of Modern College of Arts Science and Commerce, said, “We have to turn away some talented set of students just because there is a difference of one or two marks. Instead, the education office should give us extra seats which we will run on our own responsibility on an unaided basis. The intake will increase and we will ease competition to some extent.”
Colleges in the city have been demanding extra divisions for a very long time,but there has been no have not been sanctioned. The Pune district recorded a pass percentage of 99.95 % this year.
Former principal of the St Mira’s College, Gulshan Gidwani, said that, “I would say the education department must seriously think of increasing the intake of every top college by almost 20% to resolve the college popularity issue in comparison to the scores of SSC students. There is going to be blended learning anyway for some more time and a few more months so it would make sense to increase the capacity in the colleges.”
The trend seen in the admissions to FYJC, last year had arts faculty recording a higher cut-off than science faculty in almost all top rung and popular junior colleges in the city. Fergusson College had recorded the highest cut-off of 97.40% for Arts English medium while their science faculty cut-off was registered at 97%.
The changed evaluation pattern mainly riding on internal assessments and performance in Std IX had led to a record success rate in SSC results this year as 99.95 % students passed the exam. The state government had cancelled offline examination due to the pandemic and the performance of students in Std IX and X was considered assessment of students.