FYJC won't have offline admissions

Mumbai: There is potentially disturbing news for around 40,000 applicants of First Year Junior College (FYJC) courses, who have been waiting even though four merit rounds are over. The state’s school education department has completely scrapped the ‘offline’ mode of admissions from the academic year 2017-18, as it wants admission only on ‘merit’ basis and not via irregular methods.

The prime reason why the education department scrapped the offline admission is to prevent parents from falling into the trap of ‘donations’. “The system where the college asks for donation in order to get a seat should go. For this, we have to give admission to all the students through the online process and that will be done because we have 50,000-plus vacant seats,” said B.B. Chavan, deputy director of education, Mumbai region.

Colleges usually start offline admissions for students who had not got admission anywhere after the four merit rounds. Through this system, the seats are not the department’s responsibility as it completely depends on what the college wants.

“Offline admissions are to fill the remaining seats that we have and that were not filled through the online admission by the department,” said a principal. However, since this year the department has said a no to offline admissions, and colleges have to surrender the remaining seats to the department.

Seats which fall under the in-house, management and minority quotas have to be surrendered to the department, and will be considered by it for students who have not got admission even after the fourth and the special round.

Merit list time line

July 10:  First merit list was declared.
July 20: Second merit list was declared.
July 29: Third merit list was declared.
Aug. 6: Fourth merit list was declared.
Aug. 9: The 2017-18 academic year for the FYJC begins.
Aug. 16: Special round will be declared.