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Latest News |
| 23rd
July 2010 / Times of India / Mumbai Edition |
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SSC presence to rise in top colleges
Though ICSE Students Can Avail of Best-5 Policy, High-Scoring Grade III Subjects Cannot Be Counted
An overwhelming number of students from the national boards have, for many years, made it to some of the city’s top colleges. While there are obviously far more students from the SSC board than from any other, considering the sheer numbers that take the state board exams, the percentage of ICSE students at some of the best colleges is significant. But this time round, SSC students stand a better chance of monopolising the seats in some of the better colleges. The reason? A combination of a liberal marking scheme and the best-five policy.
This year, over 13,000 SSC students from the Mumbai division have scored 90% and above, more than the entire pool of ICSE students in the city. While ICSE students have also been given the benefit of the best-five policy, they have to drop the marks in the Group III subjects while counting their scores. It so happens that Group III subjects like technical drawing, and electronics are highly scoring, and cutting them out of the best-five policy puts several ICSE students at a disadvantage.
For the last two years, 40-44% of FYJC seats at Jai Hind College were taken by students from national and international boards. A majority of students belonged to the ICSE board. In St Xavier’s College, 20-25% of the seats have been taken by non-SSC students over the last couple of years, while at H R College, 40-55% of students are from non-SSC boards. This is no mean feat, considering the fact that there are over two lakh state board students and less than 10,000 ICSE students vying for a junior college seat.
When looking at the overall number of ICSE and CBSE students who made it to D G Ruparel in the last two years, it works out to a minuscule 8%. But then, the college merely has 180 seats in the open category of the total 600, the rest of which are for constitutional and social reservations. “In 2008, 120 of the 180 seats available were filled by non-SSC students,’’ said Pradeep
Kulkarni, principal of Ruparel College. In other words, merely a third of the seats were filled by SSC students.
In 2008, the state introduced its percentile system that favoured SSC students over those from other boards during FYJC admissions. Although the policy was struck down by the Bombay High Court, admissions to most colleges were over by then. In 2009, the government came out with another policy that involved reserving 90% of all junior college seats for SSC students. Though the court dismissed the policy as unfair, in the ensuing confusion many colleges went ahead and followed the government diktat.
There may, however, be more than one reason for the growth in the number of SSC students at some of the best colleges. While H R College has had a larger number of SSC students over the years, the principal has a different take on the matter. “Earlier, there were a large number of ICSE students getting into our college, but, over the last few years, around two-thirds of the students in junior college are from the SSC board. As we are located in South Mumbai and surrounded by ICSE schools, we have always had a large number of ICSE students applying to our college. But now, with an growing in the number of students willing to travel greater distances to get to a college of their choice, we have a larger number of SSC students applying to our college,’’ says college principal Indu Shahani.
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