17 June,2015 04:09 PM IST | | A Correspondent
City degree colleges announced their first merit lists yesterday and many saw an increase in cut-off marks by 2-5 percentage points; top colleges also noticed more non state-board students getting seats
Degree colleges in the city announced the first merit lists for admission to their degree courses on Tuesday evening. Most colleges witnessed an increase of 2-5 percentage points in the cut-offs as compared to last year, and apart from the fact that many top colleges noticed more non-state board students finding seats in the first list, a large number of seats have also gone to outstation students.
Students and their parents check the first merit list at Ruia College in Matunga to see if they made it. Pic/Suresh KK
"Almost 50 per cent of those who made it through to the first merit list are outstation students this year. Our BCom course is very popular among students who also opt for Chartered Accountancy simultaneously, and many students come from Gujarat, Rajasthan, Delhi and south Indian states as well," said Indu Shahani, principal of H R College in Churchgate.
She added that among the unaided courses, the Bachelor of Banking and Insurance (BBI) course got the most applications. The cut-off for this particular course went up by 2.4 percentage points. Most principals stated that the cut-offs were higher because of the high number of students scoring above 95% this year.
At St Xavier's College, the first merit list in the open category for Bachelor of Arts (BA) ended at 92.15% for HSC applicants and 97.80% for students from other boards. Similarly, the first merit list for Bachelor of Science (BSc) stopped at 91% (biology subjects) and 94% (non-biology subjects).
"Since most of the seats go towards minority and in-house quotas, there are a handful of seats left for open-category students. That is why the competition becomes even more fierce for those of us trying to change colleges after HSC," said Anandita Mukherjee, who scored 87% and aspires to study in the St Xavier's BA programme.
At N M College of Commerce in Vile Parle, while the open category list for BCom has ended at 95.80%, even the minority category list for BCom ended at 88.46%. "The competition gets tougher with every passing year," said Sunil Mantri, principal of the college.
The cut-offs here for unaided courses like Bachelor in Management Studies (BMS), Bachelor in Accounting and Finance (BAF) and Bachelor in Financial Management (BFM) ended at 95.92%, 95.50% and 94.80% respectively.
At K C College in Churchgate, the cut-offs for BMM were 93.8% (commerce and science applicants) and 93.6% for Arts students. Cut-offs for the BMS course ended at 94% (commerce) and 92% (science). Most principals said that unaided courses, once again, got more applications than aided courses.
