After being in the news for a 99 per cent cutoff for English, now St. Stephen’s policy of interviewing just four candidates per seat is being questioned by teachers.

The teachers argue that like for the rest of Delhi University (DU), nearly all St Stephen’s candidates apply for more than one subject. A science stream student is likely to apply for all the sciences and an arts student for the arts and social sciences. And with every interview, they say the number of candidates appearing for the next one, shrinks.

An open letter has been written by Stephen’s principal, Valson Thampu to students who have not made it to the interview. It states: “I, too, dreamt of studying in St. Stephen’s. I, too, failed to qualify for the interview,” he writes. “In my case, the issue was not cutoff; it was my Kerala background. There was an assumption in those days that students from my state could not measure up to the standard of St Stephen’s. But life did not end there for me. I decided to prove myself. Got enrolled in a junior college in Kerala. Studied like one possessed, topped the university and joined St Stephen’s as a graduate student. Excelled enough to be invited to join the faculty. The rest is history.” He says he hopes the candidates who didn’t make it “feel challenged and energized” as “excellence results from lifelong pursuit”.

It may be mentioned that recently, a resolution was passed by St Stephen’s College’s Supreme Council stating that its alumni have not right to interfere in its internal matters. This comes in the backdrop where a group of former students, Association of Old Stephanians, have alleged “rampant illegalities” in the functioning of the college.

The college’s Supreme Council, which is the decision making body of the institution, resolved that certain alumni are resorting to “false propaganda” and the college shall not be forced to deviate from “its time-tested traditions, conventions and convictions, nor forego its Constitutional rights, through any tactic or strategy based on it.”

 The Supreme Court (SC) has been old by CBSE that it is not possible to re-conduct All India Pre-Medical and Pre-Dental Entrance Test (AIPMT) within a month as directed by the apex court. It has sought three months time to hold the test. Over 630,000 students will have to take the All-India Pre-Medical Test afresh.

The SC cancelled this year’s AIPMT after finding out about tech-savvy students who cheated in the examination by getting answers to questions through electronic devices they smuggled into test centres across the country.

It may be mentioned that an estimated six lakh students had appeared for the examination at 1,050 centres. After it was confirmed that a section of students had smuggled electronic devices into exam centres across the country to get answers, the Supreme Court (SC) cancelled the entrance test and asked the CBSE to hold a fresh examination within four weeks. The SC has taken serious note of a confidential report submitted by the Rohtak superintendent of police in its verdict.

The links of the scam regarding cases of cheating in the AIPMT Test have been found in Nagpur, Nashik and Gondia. Recently, the country’s apex court scrapped the All India Pre-Medical and Pre-Dental Entrance Test following the cases of cheating.

This year, Krati Tiwari from Indore with All India Rank (AIR) 47, is the topper among the girls who passed the JEE (Main). 2015 has seen a marginal increase in the number of girls qualifying the exam from the previous year’s 3,009. OBC topper Majji Sandeep Kumar from Vizianagaram also got an AIR of 10. Chinmaya Sahoo from Pune is the topper in the OBC and disabled category.

The IIT-Madras zone has bagged five of the top 10 merit ranks in the country. The region, which had 50 of the Top 100 rank-holders last year, saw only 28 students fall in the top list this year. The Delhi region, which had the maximum succeeding candidates last year, saw a drop in the numbers—from 6,528 to 4,511—this year.

The topper in the IIT-Bombay zone is Bharat Khandelwal, with an AIR 5. Khandelwal (17), from Delhi Public School, Ahmedabad, managed a score of 440 in the test. Based on students’ performance, the IITs brought down the cut-off from 177 (35 per cent) to 124 or 24.5 per cent of 504. Similarly, cut-offs for each subject have been revised to 7 per cent this year from 10 per cent in the previous year. The highest score, 469/504 (93.05 per cent) secured by Jagwani, despite the difficulty level of the paper, was higher than last year’s 334/360 (92.77 per cent) scored by Chitraang Murdia. Of the 26,456 candidates who have qualified, 21,156 students made it to the common merit list.
It may be mentioned that nearly 1.5 lakh students had written the exams conducted on May 24, 2015. The exams were entrance test for students seeking admission for B.E./B.Tech courses.

In 2015, Paper 1 had 262 questions and while Paper 2 had 240. Students had issues with the excessive negative marking after the exams. Under the revised pattern two negative points are given for wrong answers.

 After it announced a staggering cut-off at 99 per cent for admissions this year, Delhi University’s (DU) St Stephen’s college has said that the boards should work on their marking indicators to make scores more ‘realistic’. The college says that it decides the cut-offs after evaluating three parameters- board marks, student-seat ratio and number of applications received.

The college received 6,000 applications for English Honours which has just 30 seats. Commerce students wishing to study English at St Stephen’s College must have a score of 99 per cent, one percentage point more than applicants last year. This year, there is no cut off below 96 per cent in the best-of-four (BO4) aggregate.

It may be mentioned that St Stephen’s has received a record 32,100 applications for 400 seats, highest in the college’s history.

Meanwhile, the centralised fitness trials for admission to Delhi University’s undergraduate courses through sports quota will begin tomorrow, with the varsity taking strict measures to avoid any “bias” and “ensure transparency” in the selection procedure.

 Come July, the Narendra Modi government is planning to launch under ‘Digital India’ a number of ambitious projects like eBasta on which all NCERT text books as well as some State Boards’ textbooks will be available online for downloading from an app free of cost. Another initiative for Aadhaar card holders will be digital locker—DigiLocker—facility which will enable Indians to secure their certificates and access them online at the click of a button. Filling up online forms using the e-sign facility and the DigiLocker will ensure elimination of usage of fake documents.

A media report states that these are the pet projects of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his office has been personally monitoring the preparation and implementation of the projects.

Recently, Union HRD Minister Smriti Irani had said that students across the country will no longer struggle  to get a copy of a lost college certificate, and digitisation of every certificate of every university in India would help resolve problems faced by many students grappling with loss of paper certificates.