NEW DELHI - Braving the scorching heat and grappling with their fears, Delhi University aspirants went from college to college to check if they had made it to the first cut-off list for admission that has gone up by a few notches this year in popular colleges.

The cut-off list for admissions to Delhi University’s colleges announced early Thursday saw many students jump for joy, while others were disappointed that they would have to wait for the second list to be out.

The lists revealed a mixed bag - while popular colleges on campus upped their entry criteria to the late 90 percenters; many off-campus colleges tried to maintain or lower the marks required for admission as compared to last year.

For the coveted B.Com (Honours) course, the cut-offs range between 95.25 to 98.75 at Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC) and a tad lower at Hindu college with 94.75 to 97.75 percent.

Many students were disappointed that they couldn’t make it to the SRCC cut-offs despite scoring 90 percent. But they had taken the precaution of applying to other colleges for the same course.

Said Rishi, who missed the cut-off by 0.25 percent: “I had my heart set on SRCC. But seeing that I missed it by such a small margin is disheartening! I will have to look at other colleges - I should make it to Hindu.”

For Economics (Honours) too the cut-offs are high - 93.5 to 96.5 percent at SRCC and 92.75 to 96.75 percent at Hindu College.

SRCC principal P.C. Jain said: “The competition is tough this year… We got applications from all over the world - including Dubai, Europe. We have kept the cut-offs at high levels. The 94 to 95 percent bracket is still too much… This is a situation point.”

But the cut-off percentage for humanities courses at Ramjas College and Kirori Mal College (KMC) were a cause for cheer.

“I am so happy - I did commerce and got 88 percent. I wanted to get into History or English honours and I’m through at KMC history (78-86 percent) and Ramjas for English (86.5-92 percent) . Still I may try via the ECA (extra curricular activity) quota at Hansraj (86-90 percent is needed),” said Droopad Bezbaruah, who had come to KMC.

Off-campus colleges like Lady Sri Ram (LSR) College and Sri Venkateswara College have relaxed their entry criteria - maintaining last year’s levels and even dipping it in some courses.

Travelling for over an hour, Annie, a student from Guwahati, succumbed to the sweltering heat and fainted, but not before learning that she had made it to the Lady Sri Ram College cut-off for the Political Science (Honours) course. She was elated.

“I have also applied for History (Honours) at St.Stephen’s College history honours course where my interview is on Sunday. But I want to play safe - I will secure admission at LSR tomorrow. The only problem is that I may need to submit my original certificates, which I also need to show at the interview,” she said.

LSR reduced the cut-offs by 0.25 percent for the B.Com (Honours) course and by two percent for English (Honours) as compared to last year. Many other colleges too have dropped cut-offs by one to three percent across streams.

“The trend this year has been that by and large there has been a dip in all on-campus colleges lists. Science courses have seen a significant dip in off-campus colleges. Cut-offs have been lowered for arts courses as well,” Delhi University’s deputy dean of students welfare Gurpreet Singh Tuteja told IANS.

The reasons for the lowering of cut-offs, Tuteja said, was the increased number of seats - varsity, where admission is considered a matter of prestige, has added 7,000 seats across courses for the coming academic session to accommodate Other Backward Castes (OBC) quota increased by nine percent this year.

“Colleges could not afford to go high this time. Cut-offs appear to have been purposely kept realistic. Colleges want to get maximum admissions in the first go itself,” Tuteja said.

Based on the first cut-offs, admissions will be open for three days starting Friday.