Mission Admission...

20K e-forms filled till Monday night

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Mumbai: After a late start on Friday and glitches on Saturday, the state’s website for online admissions to junior college has taken off with 20,000 applications filed till Monday night. They were filed by 5,000 students.

Students who have registered themselves on the website will receive a free SMS informing them of whether or not they have made it to the merit list of any college they applied to.

While 1,000 of the 4,000-odd students who applied to Mithibai College opted for online admissions, 6,000 of the 10,000 students applying to K C College went in for e-admissions. At HR, one-third of the 4,000-odd applications were made online.

“The website is working smoothly and we have sorted out all the technical difficulties initially faced,’’ said Jitendra Shah, architect of mumbaiapplication.com. He added that those who face any difficulty should check their own internet connectivity. “If you have a problem applying to a particular college, delete all the cookies on your computer,’’ he said.

If there’s poor connectivity on the computer from which you’re applying, and you have to click several times on the submit button for a particular college, the website usually deals with the problem, said Shah. However, there’s a 1% chance that the website will record multiple applications. In that case, the student will receive a message from the site.

A few Shiv Sena shakhas in the suburbs installed computers with internet connectivity and invited students to apply online. However, after the early technical glitches, the Shiv Sainiks grew agitated and repeatedly called the state education department demanding an explanation. They were later pacified and the admissions process continued smoothly.

PAPER CHASE: A large number of offline admission forms have been sold as students initially adopted a wait-and-watch attitude towards the online system

Getting on-Board!

Crossing over to another board is also an option

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Mumbai: Looking for variety? If you’re a Class X student, you have a lot of options. Besides choosing from the arts, science or commerce streams, you can also opt for an education under any board you want, not just the one you passed out of.

For instance, SSC students need not opt for the HSC in Class XI and XII. Instead, they can apply to national boards like the ISC and CBSE as well as foreign boards like the International Baccalaureate (IB). ICSE and CBSE students can also opt for other boards.

Like with colleges, schools too have their own cut-offs. Some even have their own entrance tests for students from other boards. “Not many SSC students know that they can switch over to boards like the ISC. It’s only after we advertised in neighbouring schools that we received applications from SSC students for the ISC course at our school,’’ said Carl Laurie, principal, Christ Church School, Byculla, an ICSE school that has started the ISC for the first time this year. Of 150 applications the school received for the course, 20 are from SSC students.

“We take in students based on their Class X scores in a particular subject. For instance, if a student wants to opt for science, we take into account their science and math scores,’’ says Vandana Lulla, principal, Podar International School, Santa Cruz. She adds that students from all boards opt for the IB course at her school. “SSC students are able to cope with the IB curriculum,’’ she adds.

In addition to Class X scores, at the three DAV schools in Mumbai that offer the CBSE, a diagnostic test is given to students from other boards. “Our teachers are equipped to help students from other boards adapt to the CBSE,’’ says K B Kushal, regional director, DAV Institutions, adding that 10 to 15 students who apply to each of the three schools in Class XI are from the SSC board.

COLLEGE SCAN: ST XAVIER’S

Scripting success from college days

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Mumbai: “A happy time.’’ That’s how actor Shabana Azmi
d e s c r i b e s her stint at St Xavier’s College in Dhobi Talao as she rewinds to fond memories of the years she spent there. It was on that campus, known for its Gothic structures, that she realised she was seriously interested in acting.

The college, with its strong emphasis on extra-curricular activities, proved to be an ideal nurturing hub. “At that time (early ‘70s) there was only an English theatre group. I and Farooq Sheikh, who was two years my senior, formed the Hindi Natya Manch,’’ she says with an unmistakable hint of pride. They went on to bag all the inter-collegiate acting awards that year, she recalls.

Azmi graduated from St Xavier’s in 1973 with a Bachelor of Arts and specialisations in psychology and sociology. She doesn’t get to return to her alma mater often enough, but says she still feels happy when she sees the campus in scenes on television or in the movies.

Things have changed a lot since her time there, she feels, citing the professional and commercial introductions that are evident on campuses. The inter-collegiate festival, Malhar, hosted by the college is an example. “At that time, all the money that we had to put in was from our pockets. The sets were furniture from a friend who stayed near the college and we made do with whatever there was. Now they have commercial sponsors for all of it,’’ she says.

Her message to students: “I consider formal education to be of great importance.’’

Other famous alumni:
Azim Premji, Kavita Krishnamoorthy, Swati Piramal, Fali Nariman, Pankaj Udhas, Soli Sorabjee, Alyque Padamsee, Charles Correa, Terence Lewis.

MILESTONES
St Xavier’s College was affiliated to the University of Bombay on January 30, 1869
The first three graduates of the college got their degrees in 1871
The college went co-ed in 1912 when girls were first admitted 660-SEATER: Xavier’s junior college has 330 seats in the arts stream and 330 in the science

ICONIC INSTITUTION: St Xavier’s is considered by many to be Mumbai’s premier college for arts and science

MERIT MAYHEM AHEAD...

Cut-Offs Set To Soar, Thanks To Normalisation Of Scores & Higher SSC Marks. Merit List Toppers Could Have Over 100%

TIMES NEWS NETWORK

Mumbai: In the midst of an admission season that’s full of uncertainty, with higher-than-usual SSC scores and the state government’s sudden decision to put marks scored by all boards on par, you can expect a merit list that looks very different from the one put up last year.

First of all, the cut-offs on merit lists are expected to soar. Secondly, one can expect more SSC students to occupy top slots on college merit lists.

Thanks to the extreme uncertainty prevalent in the student community, at a time when even 90% doesn’t seem to be enough, bright students with high scores are going into overdrive, applying to half-a-dozen colleges to have back-ups. This will result in the cut-offs for the first merit list going sky-high.

For instance, while K C College, Churchgate, has 240 seats in junior college, the college has received more than 240 applications from students who got over 90%. So the cut-offs this year will be exceptionally high. And don’t be surprised if the student on top of the merit list has scored over 100%.

Thanks to the new ‘marks normalisation’ scheme introduced by the state government, if the toppers from any board applies to a particular college, their scores will definitely cross 100%. This is because the scores secured by any student will be divided by the average of the top 10 scores from that board and converted into a percentage. This means that if the topper from a particular board scores 99% and the average of the top 10 scores is 97%, the normalised score would give the topper 102%.

“I don’t know how the state government expects colleges to find out the top 10 scores in boards like the ICSE and CBSE, especially when they do not release a merit list,’’ said Ruia College principal Suhas Pednekar.

Pednekar said the normalisation scheme is a very superficial way of putting the scores from different boards on par, as the ICSE, SSC and CBSE boards are different, both in terms of content as well as assessment. Incidentally, around 10 to 15 years earlier, SSC students would routinely outscore ICSE and CBSE students. The result was that, during admission time, colleges would give ICSE students a good 5% more while preparing a merit list.

However, some principals feel that the new normalisation scheme will iron out the differences between different education boards. “In the last few years, the SSC topper would get 2 to 3% less than the ICSE topper,’’ said Kiran Mangaokar, principal, Mithibai College, Vile Parle.

ADMISSIONS SCHEDULE
June 27, 28, 30 & July 1: Sale of offline forms
June 27-30 & July 1-2: Submit forms. Online submission till 5.30pm, July 2 July 3, 1pm: Master merit list for online/offline July 3, 3pm: 1st merit list
July 3-5, till 5.30pm: Pay fees July 5, 5.30pm: 2nd merit list
July 7-8 till 5.30pm:
Pay fees July 8, 5.30pm: 3rd merit list
July 9-10, till 5.30pm: Pay fees July 10, 5.30pm: 4th merit list
July 11, till 5.30pm:
Pay fees July 11, 5.30pm: 5th merit list
July 12, till 5.30pm:
Pay fees

TIME FOR REFLECTION: Students seeking admission chat with one another at a city college on a rainy Monday. The first merit list, which will be out on Thursday, is expected to have higher cut-offs than before.

450 year old tradition of education...

An A-plus accreditation by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council is just one of the reasons why St Xavier’s is a popular name in academic circles.

Principal Fr Frazer Mascarenhas says the college boasts of a 450-year-old Jesuit tradition of education that concentrates on the overall personality development of the students. “Our focus isn’t on students becoming toppers, but we are interested in students loving the subject he or she is interested in,’’ he says. A committed faculty is the college’s USP, he adds.

The college boasts of a long list of co-curricular and extracurricular activities. It is well known for the inter-collegiate festival Malhar that puts on display the creative streak. Those with a social bent can turn to the Social Service League, while the Honours programme inculcates a habit of research.

The heritage campus, with its architectural beauty, also houses the Indian Music Group, which promotes and documents classical music and hosts the annual Janfest. TNN

IIT-Bombay Meri Jaan...

IIT-Bombay is still tech Mecca for India’s brightest minds

Hemali Chhapia | TNN

Mumbai: The best of the country’s young brains continue to hanker for IITBombay. The institute has retained its position as the most sought-after IIT in the country, with Delhi and Chennai a distant second and third respectively.

A number of factors has been responsible for this, ranging from geography to gastronomy, from placement records to what coaching classes tell students. Of the top 100 JEE-2008 rankers who have been admitted into the IITs this year, more than 50% preferred IIT-B over any other IIT (see box). This was followed by Delhi, where 27 of the top 100 have been admitted. While Bombay and Delhi have maintained their positions over the years, IITMadras has overtaken Kanpur this year.

There was a time when up to 30% of the top rankers chose Chennai, but “food’’ became an issue for students. “Students have often said that IIT-M does not have the kind of food that Bombay or Delhi have. But all our students are good, whether they are in the top 100 or in the ranks below,’’ said IIT-M director M S Ananth.

On any IIT campus, the top 100 students are considered to be the icing on the cake. Twenty years ago, IIT-Kharagpur was the engineering mecca. The oldest IIT of the country, it did not receive a single student from the top 100 this year. In 2004, only three of the top 100 went there. A former JEE chairman explained, “While Bombay and Delhi were still building themselves, Kharagpur’s students had already occupied top positions in big companies. Students looked at Kharagpur’s illustrious alumni and rushed there. Now this has changed.’’

Said a student who had referred to the placement records at IIT-B, “The coaching class I went to in Kota advised me to join IIT-Bombay. The faculty at the class said that my next destination would then be no less than heaven.’’ If the old favourites—Kanpur and Kharagpur—have slid in the rankings, the new kids on the block, IIT Roorkee and Guwahati, haven’t managed to get even a single student from the top slots to opt for them. IIT-Guwahati senior officials attributed this to the low representation of students from the North-East.

IITs await HRD nod for filling OBC seats

Mumbai: IITs of Kanpur and Kharagpur have slid in the ranking while IIT-Bombay retained its numero uno position among Indias’ young brains. The top 100 rankers of IIT-JEE 2008 shy away from IITs of Roorkee and Guwahati.

“Assam is far away from most of the big cities, and the metro IITs have become more attractive despite the fact that IIT-G too has a very good placement record,’’ observed a senior faculty member.

Among the new IITs, admissions first opened in IIT-Hyderabad at rank 600. Ananth pointed out that while 116 students—108 boys and eight girls—have been admitted, four seats from the reserved category remain unfilled. As TOI had reported, of the 755 seats reserved for the Other Backward Classes, 735 have been filled. However, the IITs have no clear direction from the HRD ministry on what to do with the unfilled seats.

IIT-JEE 2008 chairman N M Bhandari pointed out that some OBC seats had fallenvacant as candidates’ preferences did not match the availability. In some cases, OBC students did not perform well in the aptitude test. Some of the courses for design and architecture require students to take an aptitude test after they qualify in the JEE.

More than 600 girls in all have been admitted to the 13 IITs this year.

Educational boards need to eliminate differences.

Normalisation: ICSE students to move HC

Anahita Mukherji | TNN

Mumbai: The state government’s hurriedly announced ‘marks normalisation scheme’—which aims to put Class X marks of the SSC board on par with the national boards—may have to face a legal hurdle. A group of parents from ICSE schools are all set to move the Bombay high court as they feel the new scheme is unfair to ICSE students and gives an undue advantage to SSC students.

The state brought out a resolution on the marks equalisation scheme late on Friday night, when the admission process to junior college had already begun. This scheme is in response to the general perception that SSC students lose out as the national boards are more liberal.

Parents from the ICSE board are up in arms against the new scheme as they feel this is “absurd and discriminatory’’.“We have appointed a wellknown lawyer to represent us,’’ said one of the parents. “How can the government come up with such a scheme based on the perception that SSC students lose out to other boards, without any hard data to back their claim? The ICSE board is a lot tougher and more challenging than the SSC board.How can the scores in very different boards be put on par? Not only is the curriculum different for both boards, but the entire system of marking is different,’’ says an irate parent.

College principals too told TOI that they felt the state government’s new move was a cosmetic change with no real substance.

LEVEL PLAYING COLLEGE FIELD?
According to the marks normalisation scheme, the average of the top ten scores in a particular board is calculated. Then the scores of a student from the same board is divided by this average. This number is then multiplied by 100 to arrive at the “normalised’’ score.

A=Average of the top ten scores from your board
M= The marks you scored
P=M/A x 100. This will be your normalised score