Akhila Damodaran

The outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic has had a drastic impact on the education system leading to mass closure of schools and colleges across the world, disrupting the learning process and delaying examinations and admissions for the ensuing academic year.

The timeline for the entire admission process has gone haywire. Comments Prateek Bhargava, CEO and founder, Mindler, “We expected things to normalise by June but the situation again went out of control. The constant changes and revamp of examination systems are affecting admissions to leading colleges. Many students are also considering taking a year’s gap and do some short certificate courses as a backup option and to utilise the time to pursue their passion.”

The admission processes of many colleges have gone online. “We did a survey among 41,000 students and found that a large number of them are comfortable with online interviews and admission processes,” says Bhargava. A few colleges have already completed their admission process online including Christ University in Bangalore that recently conducted online admission tests and interviews. “We used to conduct entrance exams in 120 centres across the country and fly our faculty to conduct interviews in Tier 1 and 2 cities. Our admission notifications are out on December 8 every year. We usually start the admission process in March but it got delayed this year. We hired a third-party platform to conduct exams online. The exams were video and audio recorded. We had about 73,000 applications so far. We have completed the admission process for most of our courses. This is the first time we did it online and we found it more effective than our earlier methods. We have seen better response. Over 95 percent applicants went through the entire admission processes. We could also declare the results much faster,” says Dr Anil Joseph Pinto, associate professor, Christ University.

Likewise, Adamas University is utilising digital media to ensure smooth enrollment. “At Adamas University, the students can simply login to the official website and apply for the courses available. The eligibility criteria to apply for UG/PG level programmes is 50 percent and 60 percent for BTech, Biotech and pharma courses. The online orientation of the first batch starts from August 17 and regular online classes from September 1 as mandated by the government, unless advisories change. Additionally, to smoothen the whole admission process we have activated our whatsapp platform. The details of the same are available on our website. The entrance exams are being conducted on July 18 and August 1,” says Prof. Dr. Deependra Jha, vice chancellor of Adamas University, Kolkata.     

Institutions that have been following blended mode for admissions have also decided to do go completely online this year. Dr Suma Singh, dean of humanities, Mount Carmel College, Bangalore says, “We had earlier facilitated physical process as well. But this year, we have gone completely online. Students can download and submit the form online. We usually have a large number of non-Karnataka students but this year, we are anticipating a drop in that number. We are discussing further on the admission processes and awaiting government to also take a call on the normalisation of marks.”

Meanwhile, several colleges are awaiting government orders and state board results to start their admission processes. Dr. Rajpal Shripat Hande, principal of Mithibai College in Mumbai says they would start the admission process a few days after HSC results are out. Colleges also expect a drop in the enrollment of students from other states.

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