An Illiberal choice: Flaws in the DU Admission System

DU is famously known to offer the best humanities education in India, but I feel that DU’s admission process itself is a black mark on its “profound standards” of humanities/arts education, for it is not just illogical, but also illiberal, which goes against the fundamental value of freedom, as propagated in most humanities disciplines.

Agreed, that DU is not a liberal arts college and that one can’t get everything they want in life. However, the idea that you can assign someone a subject to graduate in based on the best of 4 of their board marks is abysmal. The emphasis here is the assigning of a subject based on board marks, not the negatives of the board exams itself, which I will rant about in a different post.

1. Even if we agree to the relevance of board marks, as being important for some objective method of evaluation, then depending on them solely for admission is silly. Along with an emphasis on an objective method of evaluation, there should also be a “subjective” one (for the lack of a better word), like an essay, your co-curricular achievements, an interview etc. Even if one were to consider board marks solely as a fair way to judge someone’s intellect (which is not true but lets assume), then also someone gets admission based on their best of 4 subject marks, which brings me to my second argument.
2. How can someone’s best of 4 determine their passion and aptitude for the subject they want to major in? For example, lets assume that I am crazy about and talented in Psychology but I am not as good at other subjects where I relatively score less. So my best of 4 marks is 95, but my psychology marks are a 100%. So I am really good at psychology, but a college won’t accept me because their best of 4 cut-off for admission in the psychology course is 97%, which I haven’t reached because I scored relatively less in my other subjects. So my aptitude for the subject that I actually want to study is not taken into account at all.  Judging a student’s aptitude for a particular subject by his/her best of 4 score is highly illogical.
3. Why does a college have a particular  cut-off for particular subject? Say, to be eligible for the Math degree, one needs a 94%, but for a Bcom, they need a 96%.  Does it mean that math is less tough as compared to Bcom? Is it that smarter people can do Bcom and less smart people do Math? Or does the minimum percentage depend on demand and supply, that if a subject is more popular, they raise the cut off, and if its less popular, they lower it? Whose to say that I am “smart enough” for History with a 95% or good enough for Psychology at 97% (especially when its not even that subject individually, but the best of 4)?

Sure, even if you end up studying psychology,or political science, which are very liberal disciplines in themselves, how is it of any use if someone is pointing a gun to your head to study these subjects or you’re only “getting” these subjects? This way of figuring out who is “eligible” for what course/career/profession is highly flawed and inaccurate.