FYJC cutoffs may inch up in Mumbai as 90% club swells

MUMBAI: With the Mumbai division recording a higher number of students in the 90%-plus club compared with last year, the race to bag seats in top-rung colleges will get tougher, especially in arts and commerce streams. First-year junior college (FYJC) cutoffs are likely to marginally rise.
The science stream may not see much change as many aspirants have already secured seats in junior colleges that offer integrated coaching, said city college principals. Since both CBSE and ICSE have seen better results, candidates from the national boards are likely to hog the first merit list-in prominent colleges. In the SSC board, a total of 11,785 scored over 90%-this makes up 3.6% of the total candidates from Mumbai who sat for the Class 10 exams, a tad higher than last year's 10,764. The city also has six students who bagged 100%.
At St Xavier's College, psychology will now be taught in all three divisions of FYJC, but in the third division, the subject will be available on a self-financed basis, said a notification issued by the college. The fees will be higher for courses offered on a self-financed basis. For commerce, two additional divisions will be added to the existing division to have a total of three FYJC divisions (self-financed basis). For science students, a limited number of students will be offered the option of psychology (self-financed) in place of maths in FYJC.
"This year, applying to colleges is going to be like last year as the number of seats more or less remains the same. When one looks at the distribution of students across streams, the strain will be diffused a bit as there will be an option of picking one stream over the other. But the tension and anxiety will be unavoidable as many students will see that despite scoring 90%, they may not get their first choice of college," said R A Podar College of Commerce principal Shobana Vasudevan. "I would urge students to concentrate on the next two years of their journey and enrich it by picking new skills and courses, so they are ready to take on their years in undergraduate college."
Neha Jagtiani, principal of R D National College, said the performance of students has dropped across the board after the pandemic, not just in Class 10 and 12. "But for the impact of their board scores on FYJC admissions, we will have to wait and see the number of applications we receive," said the principal. Another said with more high scores across boards, there is a possibility of a marginal increase in cut-offs. But this may be restricted to humanities and commerce, he added.
The registration process of students for the FYJC Common Admission Process (CAP) is currently underway. Over 1,020 colleges will participate in it. So far, over 99,000 students have registered for the admissions. From Saturday , students can start filling up their choice of colleges.