The Shri Ram College of Commerce in New Delhi, one of the top ranked institutes for commerce in India saw an unprecedented number of students from Tamil Nadu admitted this academic year. The Economic Times reported that Tamil Nadu accounted for nearly 80% of students enrolled in SRCC this year while a Times of India report highlighted that 50 out of 110 Tamil Nadu students, came from a single school - Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in Erode.
While the state board school in Erode has in the last few years seen a sizeable number of students gaining admission at SRCC, the enrolment of 50 of their pupils at the New Delhi college has raised questions over the quality of education. It has also kicked up a debate over boards like Tamil Nadu focussing on rote learning rather than getting students to grasp concepts.
But Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan denies such reports and claims that they have always encouraged their students for commerce and the students have been selected only on merit.
Talking to The News Minute, the school principal, N S Karthikeyani said, “About 45-50 students have got admission in SRCC. Based on merit only they have been selected. In Tamil Nadu in all the private colleges, only 25% are merit based and rest 75% are management seats and community basis. But in Delhi, they take into consideration the marks scored by the students in Class XII. We motivate the students to take up commerce. Even the state rank student from our school has opted for commerce.”
The school principal also pointed out, “Most of the students who have been selected have scored double or triple centum. Most of them work really hard to get admission into either in SRCC or Christ University. In Christ College, even they have entrance exams and our students have cleared it.”
In response to the claims that the students were not able to answer questions at the interview, Karthikeyani said, “We follow the state board and few chapters might be different and dealt in CBSE, with just a single question, you cannot judge a person.”
The Times of India had reported first that staff involved in the admission process had told them that the Tamil Nadu aspirants were not able to give satisfactory answers to the questions. But Shrimann Adhith, a student who has been selected at SRCC, stated that they did not have any kind of interview at SRCC. “They were just checking our documents. As far as students from our school were concerned, we were not questioned about any subject,” he said.
“The credit goes to the teachers, from Class XI, we have been doing meticulous and conceptual work rather than mugging up. We were motivated by our teachers,” he added.
He has scored 1177/1200 and had a cut-off of 99.175& at SRCC, which includes three main subjects and one language subject.
All the students from Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan have opted for B Com (Honours) course.
This story was first reported by Vinayashree Jagadeesh and Manas Pratim Gohain in The Times of India.