Now we have witnessed that day too when the percentage of marks a college requires you to score in order to seek admission is higher than the percentage of virus and bacteria our sanitizers claim to kill. What is more important to understand now is what brought us to this situation.

ARE THE COLLEGES TO BE BLAMED?

Ridiculing colleges or the university for releasing high cutoffs is unnecessary. Cutoffs are only decided after an analysis of the sample of scores the applicants to a university have scored. Therefore, the high cutoffs are just a reflection of what the students have scored rather than being the criteria a college has set to give admissions. If students score less, cutoffs will be low!

IMMORALITY OF COLLEGES?

Colleges are blamed for releasing sky rocketing cutoffs initially, and then bringing them down later. However, cutoffs are decided after analysing the scores submitted by the students irrespective of their course preferences. and at times, students also appear for exams like JEE, NEET, CLAT, etc and also apply to various private universities and universities abroad. When such students don’t take admission in the university, the cutoff automatically falls in the subsequent lists. The initial high cutoffs are simply a consequence of  high number of null applications.

BOARDS SHOULD SCORE LESS!

The highest percentage scored by a student in UP Board is 97%. Whereas in 2019 alone, in ICSE board, 2 students scored 100 %, 16 students scored 99.75% and 36 students scored 99.5%.

The drawback of  low scoring by the board for the student here is the lost opportunity to study in a premier institution of the country. Everyone wants to score high, and three cheers to politics, everyone does! Marks are highly moderated, a win-win situation for everyone, why will anyone complain?

WHAT IS THE WAY OUT?

ENTRANCE EXAMINATIONS

An entrance examination to determine who deserves to study and who does not will ensure uniformity and fairness in scoring as all the students attempt the same paper and are scored in the same manner.

But this in reality is putting an end to one problem by creating  another. Entrance exams to decide seat allocation in Delhi University will lead to sprouting up of the coaching centers. Immense fees, hectic schedules, end of school life, and insurmountable pressure and competition makes this alternative problematic.

INTERVIEWS

Taking interviews for selecting the students for admission sounds very familiar to the recruitment procedure of the college socities. And we all know how it ends. Delhi university welcomes students from all walks of life, irrespective of their economic background, city, caste, religion and language barriers. Putting interviews in place to provide admission to candidates on the basis of their personality will make sure to secure admission for the privileged in the top institutions . Yes, not everyone is confident enough to sit in front of an interviewer and present the best of themselves. Not everyone has received enough exposure and oppurtunity in their school lives to develop their personality.

IS THERE A WAY OUT?

However, what also cannot be ruled out is that everyone deserves to be educated irrespective of the marks they have on a peice of paper.

Board results are just a criteria to decide, with its own set of problems. Any other criteria will be equally problematic.

Here, nothing can be labelled as right and wrong, this topic will always be open to debate!