It is that time of the year when thousands of school leavers who have not been swayed by the charms of Engineering, Medicine and Law make their pilgrimages to various colleges of the University of Delhi(DU) to see and to seek and get admission.Over the years, even students of Humanities have a professional option and hundreds opt for 5 year law courses.It can be inferred that the bulk who apply for DU's colleges are interested in pursuing higher education. It is therefore extremely important whether one chooses a college or a course.
Because of various selection criteria and choice of subjects in school students are often confounded by this choice.There would be some students who would and could get any course of their stream and some of others as well.For example a Humanities student with Best Four Subjects (BFS) of 99 with Economics and mathematics amongst them can get admission to any college including Hindu College and LSR who admit on the basis of marks alone for any Arts Honours programme. This student can also get admitted to Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics Honours Courses. Leaving this set, we could have students who because of many combinations get say history in St.Stephen's and Political Science which may have her first choice in LSR. Or more tantalisingly if it has been his favourite subject and has to make a choice between Hindu and St.Stephen's.
In these cases the student has to make a choice.If one wants to go for higher studies in the subject or wants to read Economics, it makes sense to pursue Economics at any Delhi university college where marks can get her/him.What has to be remembered is that unlike the IITs or the National Law Universities, the degree given at the end of three years across colleges is the same and does not have the name of college written on it.As regards faculty, there is hardly any difference. Suvir Kaul is Rosenthal Professor of English at UPenn but taught English for years at Khalsa College.The student pool, residential facilities, discipline levels could be different but the levels of teaching and the course remain the same. even the student pool has been narrowed down thanks to CBSE's evaluation standards. Thirty five years back, the cut off for English Honours in St.Stephen's and Hindu Colleges were 70% with Elective English and at KM College it was 65%.The five percent differential was quite a bit.Even that has narrowed down now., though it did not make much difference even then as university toppers could be from any where and were from any college.For the mentioned class of 1983, English Honours, it was a student of LSR who topped the university and she went on to become a scholar in Sociology and not English. Amitav Ghosh had read History in college and moved to Sociology, a few years earlier.
So the college or course debate is not as open and shut as one can imagine.It is possible to change discipline in a related or inter-disciplinary area.Another fact that should be important while chosing a course is aptitude.Since most schools do not have counsellors and Delhi University do not have any aptitude Test, students may end up doing a course which they do not like because of the trend or informal pecking order.Most schools do not offer a choice of Elective english and CBSE does not permit the students to offer English as an elective as in the past. Several schools teach the CBSE Communicative English in Class ten and not English language and literature. This means that if you are interested in doing English Honours, you have to do a lot of reading on the side. The easiest way to set out is that in the Vacations after Class ten or even twelve, one can read all the set texts of ISC Class XI-XII Literature in English/Elective English.While the number of books are fewer than before, there is still a wide variety. The ten books prescribed can be read over two weeks and after that one can graduate to reading thirty odd books more depending on whether Arthur Miller or Amitav Ghosh or Kiran Desai interested one more. Even after all this, Vindicating fanny Price or any Jane Austen character that the tutor may set for the first tutorial may be akin to the high flying Afghanistan team from T20s facing India in a test match.But the teachers will take care over the next three years.But the basic readiness to read and to write has to be there.Just like cricket is about bat and ball, a course in English is about reading and writing.There will be gender studies, new criticism or even post-modernism a little later which English honours will gently introduce over the years.
Then, there is a small matter of after college job opportunities.Here there are a few colleges which have more placement opportunities.Even certain courses have possibilities of placement after college more than others.A careful look at precedents and preferences can be found out.this is generally not available in the public domain but available in detail in DU folklore.interaction with school contemporaries or neighbourhood friends at or recently out of DU can be a good source for these inputs.
After balancing all probabilities, a student can with perhaps a little nudge from parents arrive at a satisfactory choice of college and a subject for college.
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