Mumbai: With the students now having a wider range of options across colleges in Mumbai and other parts of the country, traditional programmes, including arts in leading colleges, appear to have taken a hit. The second merit list, released on Saturday evening, showed a dip in cut-offs across several programmes. While commerce and allied courses continued to command relatively high cut-offs, arts saw a visible decline, with some of the city’s leading colleges recording cut-offs below the 90% mark. Science cut-offs, meanwhile, plunged in the second round, with several colleges seeing them fall into the 50% range.St Xavier’s College comes out with a separate list for students from HSC and other boards. While the second round for BA at the college for students from other boards closed at 96.80%, for HSC students it came down to 86% this year. At Mithibai, it closed at 89%; at Jai Hind, 85%; and at Ruia, 70%. Principal Anushree Lokur from Ruia College said that students these days have plenty of options. “City colleges have branched out into offering plenty of allied and innovative courses. There are also many private universities that have come up in the state and the rest of the country. Traditional courses are taking a hit,” she said, adding that no students are opting for science.Another principal pointed out that colleges are no longer receiving the volume of applications they once did. “With admissions beginning earlier than before, many students miss deadlines as the process starts during the vacation period. There is also persistent confusion over the university’s admission procedure. Some students complete only the university registration, while others submit only the college application. Such problems have become a recurring feature of the admission cycle,” he said.Jai Hind College principal Vijay Dabholkar said the admissions are going smoothly, with newer courses picking up amid the rush for established self-financed ones. He said courses in digital strategy, international accounting and actuarial studies are filled up to 80% after the first list. At Mithibai College, the self-financed programmes’ cut-offs have gone down due to an increase in divisions, said principal Krutika Desai. She added that science cut-offs are poor across the board.HR and KC colleges, which now come under HSNC University, released their third list too. Cut-offs at the colleges remained on the higher side in popular commerce and allied courses. Principal of HR College Pooja Ramchandani said that students are now trying to pursue professional courses such as CA, CFA and actuarial studies, along with the regular BAF, BCom and BBI courses.
