Not enough time: Students rush for intermediate admissions as deadline approaches

Admissions opened during the last week of Ramazan

LAHORE:

As routine life returned to the city after week-long Eid holidays, thousands of students thronged admissions offices of various colleges on Monday seeking information on how to apply to their intermediate programmes.

The Boards of Intermediate and Secondary Education in the Punjab announced the results of matriculation examinations on July 25 and admission to public and private colleges opened towards the end of July.

Several colleges opened for admissions to intermediate programmes the day matriculation results were announced. Government College University opened for admissions a day earlier.

Carrying usual pre-requisites for submitting admission applications – passport-sized photographs and photocopies of educational documents – thousands of students visited colleges on Monday.

Yasmeen Sehr, a student seeking admission at the Lahore College for Women University, said, “I have been up since early morning to avoid long queues at the college.”

Admissions to the intermediate programme at the LCWU will close on August 9. Principal Mahrukh Bukhari said a large number of students had applied for admission to the college this year.

Kinnaird College for Women too will close admissions for its pre-medical, pre-engineering, ICom, humanities, general science, ICS, physics and statistics programmes by August 9. This is a cause for concern for many students.

Saima Khan, a student, said, “We’ve been given very little time to collect the documents and submit them.”

Similar reservations were expressed by Tahira Aslam, who rushed her daughter Ramisha Aslam, who scored 1,071 marks and bagged the third position in matriculation, to Kinnaird on Monday morning. “We managed to submit our forms after standing in line for a whole day. I wish students had been given more time.”

Considering that admissions opened in the last week of Ramazan, it wasn’t fair to several students who might have needed more time to gather the requisite documents for admission, she said.

The admissions office at Forman Christian College, too, remained busy on Monday. Many applicants preferred posting their queries on an online portal on their admissions website.

The office says that while queries had been piling up over the past few days, they had managed to respond to all of them by 9:30am on Monday morning.

The last date to submit application forms at the Government College University is August 11, after which three merit lists will be announced on August 15, August 21 and August 27. This will be subject to availability of seats. Detailed admission schedules and forms are also available on the GCU’s website.

For Usama Qamar, who topped the matriculation examination by securing 1,076 marks, admission to an intermediate programme of his choice was not a problem. His father, Mohyuddin Qamar, said his son had secured admission in the pre-medical intermediate programme at the Pattoki campus of the Punjab Group of Colleges.

While Usama has secured a spot in the intermediate programme of his choice, other exam toppers are busy submitting admission forms. Some are still working out their preferences. “I haven’t decided about what I want to pursue ahead,” said Ali Husnain who secured second position in matriculation exams. Ali, who lives in Nankana Sahib, scored 1,072 marks and says that he was confident that he would get admission in the institute of his choice.

Shamrooz Ali, who topped the humanities group among boys with 992 marks, said he too was unsure about the college and programme he wanted to apply to. His uncle, Muhammad Akram, said, “His personal preference is the Government College University and the Punjab College but he hasn’t applied for admission yet. His school teachers are guiding him through the process,”

Published in The Express Tribune, August 5^th, 2014.