DU admissions: Subject secured, outsiders finally head for hometown

NEW DELHI: Admission done, Utkarsh Pathak can
finally head home to Shravasti, Uttar Pradesh. He
came to Delhi on June 24, sure he'll make it into a
chemistry honours seat in first-list cutoffs. He
wasn't wrong. After a week's wait and Rs 20,000
in hotel bills, he took admission in Hindu on
Tuesday.
"I've been staying in a hotel with my parents. I'm
not going to stick around for St Stephen's final list.
We're pretty late already," says Pathak. "Most
candidates who came today are from outside
Delhi," says Shubham Dubey, manning the
helpdesk at Hindu. "There's massive confusion
about cutoffs and many are coming in just to
check minimum scores."
"I've been in Delhi for a week, anxiously waiting
for the cutoffs to be announced. I live in Assam
and the wait has been painful," says Bisakha Pegu
who's taken admission in sociology at Kamala
Nehru College. "We've been staying at a friend's
house since June 24.The delay has really
bothered us. The only saving grace is that I got the
subject of my choice," says Rashika PC from Kota,
Rajasthan. She'll be studying English at KNC.
Nikita Natarajan was lucky enough to have a
relative in the capital she could stay with. "Many
friends who came to Delhi with me went back to
Kolkata," she says as the Hindu principal signs
her application form for history.
Geetika Lakhotia from Bhilai has been staying with
relatives in Noida and Ashutosh Shukla from
Gorakhpur was sharing digs with a college senior.
Both have bagged seats in Hindu, in BCom (H) and
Hindi, respectively, and neither plans to stick
around for the second list. "I will come back when
classes begin," says Shukla.
Meenakshi Chatterjee arrived on June 22 from
Tripura. "I have been reading about FYUP but
thought that by June 24, it would be resolved. Also
we booked the tickets in advance. It wasn't
possible to go home and return on such a short
notice. So we have been staying in a hotel in
Paharganj. Thankfully, my admission is done on
the first day."