After the FYUP confusion...

Waiting for something is always awful, isn’t it? That is what I feel as the FYUP issue gets more confusing. So let’s talk about cut-offs. It is not that I am frightened. Having scored a decent 96.75% in commerce, I am pretty confident of bagging a seat. But one question that keeps pestering me is - why am I worried? The reason is simple – since the competition is very stiff the cut-offs are going to be very high. Not that I am complaining, because I agree that it is only fair to keep the cut-offs at a higher level to prevent ‘‘over admission’’.

People around generally are of the view that cut-offs facilitate only the brilliant students and there should be some other way to assess students. However, I believe that the value of cut-offs cannot be entirely dismissed. After all regular good performance is the scale to measure any person.

It is said that aptitude should be kept in mind while choosing the course. But in practice this does not happen since most students end up applying for all the courses that are on offer. This in my view is wrong. Think about this - just because of your mindless application, a more deserving candidate may lose his/her seat because the cut-offs are kept in accordance to the number of applications received and the percentile of those applications.

So there should be a check on the number of courses which a person can apply to. This will also save a great deal of processing time for the colleges. At the other end of the debate are entrance tests! I am an ardent supporter of entrances; as I believe they help select the deserving students. But do they really?

I wonder what do these increasing cut-offs predict for the future? Does that mean we will now be seeing more of 100 % scorers? Or would this mean there will be more students without a seat in a good college? I fear that both the answer and the situation are hypothetical.