‘Picking popular colleges self-defeating’

MUMBAI: Anxious parents and students, who did not manage to secure seats in bifocal admission rounds of first year junior college (FYJC), gathered outside the state education department on Thursday.

Around 1,500 to 2,000 students are left without any seat by the end of the bifocal admissions that will now be transferred to the general merit list, which will be out on July 5.

Department officials meanwhile are blaming parents and students for “choosing only top and popular colleges” in their preference list, which, according to them, is the reason why students’ names have not shown up in the bifocal merit lists.

This year, the department had around 26,000 seats for bifocal courses in colleges and 14,578 applications.

Even after availability of seats, students have been left out.

An official said, “Students need to update their list after every round if they fail to get their name in the previous rounds. Moreover, apart from the top and popular colleges, they should mention other colleges next to their location in the preference list. There is a huge number of vacant seats in regular colleges, in which the students do not want to take admission.”

A parent who did not want to be named told this newspaper, “I wanted admission in KC College for my son as there are very few colleges that offer electronics as an option in bifocal.”

She added: “However, instead of KC, my son got admission in a Parel-based college which I don’t want. Hence, we waited for the second merit list. Now, in the second merit list too, my son hasn’t been allotted a seat. In this situation, what else can be done?”

Poonam Shete, a student, said, “I wanted computer science as it would make it easier for me while doing my engineering.”

Shete added: “However, my name wasn’t listed in both lists, so now I am forced to take biology or chemistry which won’t do any good for my engineering.”