KOLKATA: The last day of undergraduate admissions in Bengal has been extended to October 8 to help universities and colleges to fill vacancies. The higher education department on Tuesday permitted educational institutes to reopen their online admission portals and receive fresh applications for subjects, where seats are still vacant.
First-semester UG classes are, however, likely to begin from October 1, as mentioned earlier, as the circular did not mention anything about it. “Both will continue simultaneously,” an official said.
Some universities and colleges still have 30% to 50% seats vacant after multiple rounds of admissions, prompting them to appeal to the state to extend the deadline by over a week. The earlier September 30 deadline will end in another two days.
Before this date-extension circular was issued, institutes across the city had gone in for a last-minute blitzkrieg to admit as many candidates as possible from their lists.
While some came up with innovative methods for rapid admissions, others have rolled out multiple wish lists so that those lower on the merit list but genuinely interested in studying there could register and take admission. Some initiated further rounds of online reporting so that only interested candidates could be considered for preparation of provisional merit lists.
Maulana Azad College started something called a rapid round admission to fill its vacancies. Students expressing interest in taking admissions will get two hours to carry out all the admission formalities. The college published five merit lists for rapid round admission till Tuesday evening, the first one being at 10am on Monday.
“Less than 10% seats are vacant now. The rapid round immensely helped because interested students are finishing admission formalities within two hours,” said Subhasis Dutta, principal of the college. Since the beginning, the college has been publishing their lists in quick succession to offer chances to a large number of students.
After publishing three merit lists, Presidency University has initiated another round of online reporting for almost all subjects. “Candidates will require to upload copies of their marksheets and certificates. Only those with all documents in place will be considered for provisional merit list in the next rounds,” said an official of the university.
Seth Anandram Jaipuria College has started registration for wish list for vacant seats, including those from the reserved category. “We wish to fill as many vacant seats as possible and want to give every applicant a fair chance to take admission,” said Asok Mukhopadhyay, principal of the college.
