• ‘Normalisation’ leads to rise in cut-off marks  •

Pune edition, 22nd July 2008

Pune: The percentile formula, introduced this year for ‘normalisation’ of marks to bring the state board students on par with the CBSE and ICSE students, has led to inflated cut-off marks for Std XI admissions to junior colleges in the city and Pimpri-Chinchwad.

This was evident from the first list of Std XI seat allotments, which was released on Monday by the centralised admission process (CAP) joint panel.

All the 51,700 candidates, who had submitted admission forms, have landed a seat and the process for confirmation of admissions, by paying the fees at the allotted institutions, would commence from Tuesday (July 22).

Post-percentile, the cut-off mark (score at which admission closes at a given college) for science stream was as high as 97.58 at the Laxmanrao Apte junior college, while the same at the Fergusson college was 95.49. Last year, the percentage-based cut-offs at these two institutions were 89.54 and 89.38, respectively.

Pune’s divisional deputy director (education), G.K. Mhamane, explained that the inflated cut-offs was no true reflection of the net difference between the cut-off marks last year and this year. “The net difference works out to 1.5 to 2 per cent,” he said.

Spurred by the feeling that the CBSE and the ICSE boards were more liberal with marks, the state introduced a specific formula-based percentile scheme.