Mumbai: The second merit list for first-year junior college (FYJC) courses was released Friday morning and cut-offs dipped 0.5-2% across streams and colleges. Some of the popular colleges attributed the marginal dip to the handful of seats left for allotment in the second common admission round.
“All our seats were allotted in the first merit list itself, out of which 411 students confirmed admissions, leaving less than 20 seats for allotment in the second round. Since only these many students have been allotted seats in the second round, our cut-off dipped by less than 0.4%,” said Pooja Ramchandani, principal of HR College, Churchgate.
The second merit list cut-off at HR College in Churchgate, a popular destination for commerce aspirants, ended at 92.6%, 0.4 percent points lower than the first list. Similarly, the cut-off at R A Podar College in Matunga, also popular for commerce aspirants, stood at 91.8%—0.6% points below the first list. The first merit list at St Xavier’s College, a popular destination for Arts candidates, had ended at 94.2% and the second merit list ended at 93.4%, 0.8% point lower.
As per information shared by the office of the deputy director of education (DyDE), 69,691 students were allotted seats in the second merit list, out of which 15,121 were allotted seats in the college of their first preference, followed by 13,566 and 10,239 students being placed in the college of second and third preference, respectively. In the first round announced on August 3, over 1.39 lakh students were allotted seats and nearly 75,000 of these students had confirmed admissions.
In a couple of cases, the cut-off in the second merit list was higher than the first merit list as students with high scores secured a seat in their first preference college. “Several high scoring students who had confirmed admissions in a college under quotas have withdrawn admissions after they got allotment in a college of their choice in the second merit list. This has been the trend noticed in the last couple of years,” said a spokesperson from a suburban college.
In some cases, especially in the Arts stream, the cut-off dropped by over 10% as well. At Ruia College, the first merit list for the Arts stream had ended at 91.4%. However, the second merit list ended at 79.2%–11.2 percent points lower. “The cut-offs depend on applications received by individual colleges. A major dip in cut-off like this could only mean that there weren’t enough applications for that particular course and college,” said an official from DyDE.
