College admissions: GCU raises number of intermediate seats by 130

Spokesman says seats increased in view of better matric results.

LAHORE:

For the first time in ten years, Government College University (GCU) has announced an increase in the number of seats in their Intermediate programme, most of them in pre-engineering and pre-medical.

The university will be taking on an additional 130 students on open merit to its intermediate programme, said a notification dated August 6.

“Students securing A+ grades deserve to get a shot at institutions like GCU,” said GCU spokesman Musaddiq Suhrawardy. The new seats will increase the number of intermediate students to 1,155, including merit and reserve seats, he said.

Eighty of the new seats are for pre-engineering and pre-medical students. “There is a greater competition for admission in these disciplines, especially in public educational institutions,” Suhrawardy said.

He said that since gaining university status in 2003, GCU had been receiving around 8,000 applications a year for admission to the intermediate programme. But this year, the university received 12,000 applications, a record.

“This year we observed a drastic change in the application pattern,” said Suhrawardy.

“Owing to the high pass percentage we knew there would be a greater number of good students who would have to be accommodated this year,” he said.

Despite expecting more applications, the GCU had to get extra application forms printed.

According to the results announced by the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE) on July 25, the matriculation pass percentage went up from 59 per cent last year to 65.71 per cent this year.

He said that 130 was the maximum number of seats the university’s intermediate programme could have expanded by this year, taking into account the classroom size, scheduling and the load on teachers, he said.

According to the first merit list for GCU announced on August 6, 255 students qualify on merit (at 971 marks) for the pre-engineering programme and 264 (also 971 marks) for the pre-medical programme. The second merit list is to be announced on August 13. The merits lists will be available on the university’s website and will be displayed at three locations on the GCU campus.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 8^th, 2012.