In an effort to make admissions more inclusive, Bangalore University (BU) will reserve as much as 15 per cent of its seats for students from other varsities in Karnataka, in postgraduate courses from this year onwards.

Of the 15 per cent, about 8 per cent of the seats would be reserved for students from the Hyderabad-Karnataka region. The university will start the counselling for PG courses for the academic year 2015-16 on August 4.

The reservation of seats for candidates from other universities is based on a decision taken by the Karnataka State Higher Education Council, BU Vice-Chancellor Prof B Thimme Gowda said.

The move is aimed at extending the benefit of admission to all students of Karnataka, he added.

Students joining PG courses at BU this year need not wait in serpentine queues to pay fees. Last year, many students had to wait in queues for three to four hours as they were asked to pay the fees on the same day of seat allotment. Not just this, the only place where they could pay the fees was a bank’s branch on the university’s campus.

This time, students need not pay the fees on the day of seat allotment. What’s more, they can pay the fees in other branches of the bank too. Better still, they can transfer the money online to the university’s account.

The university conducts PG counselling as per the order of the merit of students. There is no separate entrance test for PG courses.

The timetable

The admission procedure for the majority of the courses will be conducted on the Jnanabharathi campus and for others at the Central College. The counselling for PG in Electronic Media will be held on August 4 at the Prof K Venkatagiri Gowda Hall.

The admissions for Kannada, all Arts courses, MCom and related subjects and foreign languages will be held on August 4 and 5. Admissions for Kannada will be conducted at the Centre for Kannada Studies, and Arts courses at Prof K Venkatagiri Gowda Hall, Dr H N Auditorium and Manasa Bhavan.

Admissions for commerce courses will be conducted at the Department of Commerce and those for Foreign Languages at the Centre for Global Languages, Prasanna Kumar Block on the Central College campus.

The university will conduct admissions for science courses at  Prof K Venkatagiri Gowda Hall, Dr H N Auditorium and Manasa Bhavan on August 6 and 7. More than 2,000 seats are on offer for various PG courses in BU departments. Admissions for PG courses in the university’s affiliated colleges are also conducted at the counselling.

MA in Journalism

From this year onwards, BU will also offer the Mass Communication and Journalism course as an MA programme. Until now, it was being offered as ‘MS in Communication’. This decision was taken to make the degree uniform with the rest of the universities in the country, the V-C said. The course in Electronic Media, however, would continue to be offered as MSc in Electronic Media.