Delhi University's admission helpline received 120-130 calls daily

From parents filling up their details in their wards' admission forms to candidates mentioning wrong gender, Delhi University's admission helpline has had a busy time providing answers to queries from harried applicants and their parents.

The helpline, which was made operational on May 7, has been handling 120-130 calls from students and parents on a daily basis, apart from helping colleges in solving various issues.

A counsellor at the helpline said that many students reached out to them with the problem that their parents filled in their own details in the application forms.

In a case, a young man had called the helpline saying that he had mentioned his gender while filling up his sister's form, thereby rendering her ineligible for admission to women's only colleges, said another counsellor.

The helpline also get queries to which the counsellors don't have an answer to, they said.

"This time, a candidate called us saying that she has filled her gender as 'others' but in six months' time, she will be undergoing a sex change operation to become a woman. So what should she do?" the counsellor said.

He said that he had passed on the query to his seniors and a decision was yet to be taken on the matter.

Another common query that counsellors get is about the candidate not being able to generate his admit card for entrance exams or not being able to pay fees.

In many cases, candidates fill two forms and admission cards are generated on both but they can take the exam on only one of the applications.

"After they have cleared the entrance, they usually forget on which admit card they had taken the entrance exam and try completing their formalities on the form on which they had not taken the exam," he says.

Students are not only curious about their own admissions but they also call up counsellors to ask about other students who have scored high marks.

"Many students call up to ask, 'Could you please tell me which student has got the highest marks in a particular subject? ' or 'Which of the applicants has the highest marks among all the applicants who have applied for this course'," the counsellor said.

In another case this year, a college staffer ended up paying the fee of a student who had asked him to cancel his admission.

"A candidate gave Rs 500 to a man sitting on the admission desk and requested him to cancel his admission. The college staffer inadvertently ended up paying the candidate's fee of Rs 5,000. He called us up on what to do but we could only tell him to find the student since the money will be refunded to the candidate's account," said the counsellor.

Counsellors say that they mostly get queries from students who are applying for admission to undergraduate courses and the number of queries has declined after the varsity announced its fourth cut-off list.