The University Grants Commission (UGC) has requested all Higher Educational institutions to “fix the last date of their undergraduate (UG) admission process after declaration of Class Xll results by the CBSE, to provide sufficient time to such students for admission in UG courses.
The communication, dated July 12, further said that since the CBSE had conducted Board examination in two terms to nullify the impact of COVID-19, the final results would have to be computed to incorporate the performance of both the terms. “The performance of term-l has already been communicated to the schools. The evaluation of term-Il is going on and process of result preparation will start. The final result will be declared by combining the weightage based on the performance of both the terms,” the notice read.
The UGC has said it could take “about a month” to declare the results. The notice follows information that some universities had started registering students for UG courses for the academic year 2022-23, said Rajnish Jain, secretary. College principals are, however, awaiting direction from the State government to open their doors to first year students.
The School Education Department released Class XII results on June 20 and colleges say admission for these students is almost complete. Normally, CBSE releases results a few weeks after the State Board does.
Government arts and science colleges are also concerned about the delay. T. Veeramani, president, Tamil Nadu Government College Teachers Association, said the delay was helping aided and self-financing college admissions. “The toppers are being harvested by aided and self-financing colleges. Last year, 805 CBSE students applied. This year we could set aside 1,000 across the 163 colleges and carry on with the counselling. This could however make it difficult to prepare the merit list,” he opined.
Some aided college principals are worried that the students might go to deemed universities, owing to the delay.
The Madras Christian College is holding seats for CBSE students. “The government might plan to allow extra seats shortly to accommodate them. We have to compensate the delay for the working days too,” said Principal P. Wilson.
The Women’s Christian College, too, has allocated a few seats for the CBSE students. “We are almost finished with the (admission for) State Board, and have kept a few seats pending for the CBSE students,” said Lillian Jasper, Principal. Around 25% applicants are from the CBSE stream usually, she said. The college admits 60% students from State Board; and another 15% from other States’ Boards, she added. With more schools converting to CBSE the student pool has widened in recent years. “The demand is high for Psychology and Commerce. The ICSE is also yet to release its Class XII results,” she pointed out.
At MOP Vaishnav College, the demand is high from CBSE students for B. Com Marketing programme. “Normally the ratio of CBSE to State board is 30:70. Some CBSE schools have a course on marketing and we depend on CBSE students, as they want to join the course. In most of the other courses we have very little to distinguish between the two streams. We cannot do the final admission. May be shortlisting or provisional admission is possible,” she said. She said it could probably reduce the students’ chances in subjects such as Journalism, where shortlisting is based on English proficiency.
D.G. Vaishnav College Principal Santhosh Baboo said the college had allocated 20% of its seats in arts and commerce courses. Students from science stream show lesser preference as they would be pursuing engineering and NEET, he said.
In schools, however, a similar scenario is not playing out, according to K.R. Nandakumar, secretary, Tamil Nadu Matric Higher Secondary, CBSE Schools. “Students are admitted based on their school marks. Since they are moving from a tougher board to an easier board they would have the ability to cope with the subjects. We give them conditional admission,” he said.
