Delhi University filled 60% of seats through CUET. The other 40% at Aditi Mahavidyalaya and Bhagini Nivedita College remain empty. So DU did something rare: it allowed both colleges to take admissions based on Class 12 board marks.
Nearly 2,000 seats were lying vacant. Why? Because CUET is urban, English-heavy, and coaching-driven. Rural and semi-urban students never got the memo. “Our teachers never told us about CUET,” said one student from Bawana. Another couldn’t apply for humanities because her school didn’t offer arts. This exposes the limit of centralization. CUET was meant to end cut-off inflation and “board marks bias.” Instead, it created a new bias: against students without access to test prep and information.
The DU official was candid: “Colleges on the outskirts were not getting students through CUET.” So the solution was to go local. Aditi and BNC are now filling seats via boards, online and offline.
Is this a rollback? No. It’s a correction. India is too diverse for one test. A student in Rampur with 93% in boards but no CUET coaching should not be locked out of DU.
The larger lesson: equity needs more than one entrance exam. It needs outreach, vernacular material, and college-level flexibility. Let St. Stephen’s have interviews. Let BNC use boards. Let North Campus keep CUET.
Centralization is efficient. But education is not a factory. When 985 seats stay empty while students with 90%+ marks sit at home, the system is not meritocratic. It’s mechanical. DU’s experiment should become policy: let colleges serving specific regions adapt. Otherwise, we’ll keep producing toppers without classrooms.