The joy is short-lived for students who were rejoicing after the reintroduction of Maharashtra Common Entrance Test (MH CET) for Maharashtra colleges. The new admission procedure has left them baffled. Engineering and medical colleges in the state will now follow the ‘Freeze, Float or Slide’ policy like the Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA). JoSAA is a committee that takes care of seat allocation to 23 IITs.
So while the Joint Entrance Examination has been abolished in Maharashtra, the influence of the admission process persists. Thus, students, once allotted a college, can either freeze their seat and not be eligible for admission in any other college, or they can forfeit the seat and wait for another allocation.
Officials say the new policy is meant to reduce the uncertainty over existing seats. Students usually confirm a seat in a college and then wait for a better opportunity until the end of the admission process. Thus, when they switch over to another college, the seat forfeited in the previous college goes waste. With the new process, it is hoped that lesser seats will be wasted in the engineering and medical colleges.
However, earlier this year, it was announced that engineering and medical colleges in the state will follow a non-zero policy for admissions. It means that students with as low as one mark in MH CET will be eligible to seek admission in any college that has vacant seats. Aditya Jaswani, who took the CET this year, says, “On the one hand, they are trying to ensure that every student gets a seat in a college, but on the other hand, they have made it difficult to choose a college. We now have to choose our options sparingly.”
The new policies have been introduced to make the admission process more efficient. However, keeping the large-scale confusion during last years’ JoSAA allocation process in mind, students are hoping that do not end up facing the same this time around as well.