High cut-off marks for I PU admission unnerves students

As the beginning of the academic year for I year PU draws nearer, parents and students are making rounds of pre-university colleges, trying to get admission in the courses of their choice.

Demand for seats in certain reputed colleges is so high that anyone who has scored less than 95% or 10 CGPA finds it difficult to get in.

In some cases, even scoring 10-point CGPA in CBSE Class X board exams was not enough. One parent, Mahesh, was shocked to learn of the high cut-off marks, when he applied for his daughter in several colleges.
“In a college in Rajajinagar, they rejected my daughter immediately since she scored 8.8 CGPA. But even those who scored 10.00 were not good enough. Students who had an asterisk mark next to their CGPA were filtered out,” he said.

According to the CBSE’s grading system, the asterisk indicates that the student’s grade was upgraded to the next level in a maximum of two subjects because of his or her performance in co-scholastic areas.

“When my daughter scored 86% in the SSLC examination, I thought it was a good score but getting admission has been difficult. She wanted to get admission to MES PU college in Malleswaram for Science, but the cut-off is too high,” one parent said.

He said that in some of the private PU colleges he approached, management seats were presented as the only option for those who had not made the cut-off. “But they charge a high price for these seats, often between Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2 lakh rupees,” he said.