Over 2,600 overseas applicants

Most of them from South, Southeast Asia

Delhi University on Thursday said it has received over 2,600 foreign applications this year amidst surge in number of applicants for 54,000 undergraduate seats in varsity-affiliated colleges.

Barely three days before curtains are drawn on the online and offline registration for 52 undergraduate courses, the university has received over 1.9 lakh online and 40,000 offline applications.

Last year, around 21,000 foreign students from 85 countries had applied for various undergraduate, postgraduate, certificate and PhD courses. “This time we have received applications from newer countries such as Argentina, Morocco, Spain and Belgium,” the head of DU's foreign registration office, Amrit Kaur Basra, told Deccan Herald.

According to the university, most of their foreign students come from South Asian and Southeast Asian countries.

Delhi University, for instance, has 311 students from Nepal, 55 from Afghanistan, 26 from Maldives, 23 from Sri Lanka, 23 from Vietnam, 22 from Bhutan, 10 from Bangladesh, and seven from Indonesia.

There is also a steady inflow of foreign students to DU from Middle Eastern, European and African countries like Iran (11), Iraq (7), Nigeria (11), Congo (10), Zimbabwe (10) and Somalia (two).

DU has no dearth of vacancies for foreign nationals, Basra said. All varsity departments and its affiliated colleges have 5 per cent “supernumerary” quota for foreign national – meaning, they can admit 5 per cent more students than their sanctioned strength.

However, sometimes they fail to fill up the supernumerary seats. “Many of our departments are highly ranked, both in Asia and globally. So we see a huge rush for courses such as Zoology and Botany. But there are always fewer applications for History and courses on Indian languages,” Basra said.

In order to solicit more applications, the university may consider extending the date of application to June 30, she added.

Meanwhile, close to 3 lakh students have registered online for undergraduate courses in DU. “The total number of applicants who registered online till 5 pm on Thursday is 2,97,091 of which 1,90,252 have made the payments,” Malay Neerav, Joint Dean of Students’ Welfare at DU, said.

The university also sold over 60,000 offline registration forms through its 8 admission centres, and as many as 40,000 applicants have already submitted their forms.
The last date for both online and offline registration is June 15.