The Centralised Admission Policy (CAP) committee is responsible for ensuring smooth and transparent admissions in all public sector colleges and higher secondary schools of the city. Initially, these admissions were based on zones, i.e. admission to colleges according to students’ residential addresses.

This system was later revised to introduce open merit, i.e. marks obtained by students came first and residence came second. The step was meant to ensure merit-based admissions but sadly it has only proven to be a cause of agitation among students and parents.

First, it defies logic that a handful of colleges should be marked as ‘high merit’ while the rest should be decided upon as ‘low merit’. This favours a few colleges while degrading the rest.

Secondly and most importantly, this merit system causes a concentration of top scorers in the same college which further deprives other colleges of any chance to improve their merit or vie for the top slot. Over the years these colleges only go on falling into oblivion.

Moreover, thousands of deserving students who could not get admission to the best colleges develop an inferiority complex and feel ashamed in revealing the name of their college in order to avoid being judged on its basis.

Often, a single mark deprives a deserving student of admission to his/her desired college, causing untold misery and anxiety to students and parents alike.

Further, a lot of students under pressure of ‘merit system’ opt for colleges situated far away from their homes. Consequently, commuting to and from the college becomes a headache, encouraging students to remain absent and also worsening the traffic problem.

Even if a top-scoring student chooses a college near his home, he would still be the one losing since apparently only the top college has the right to the top positions and admission to any other college means that obtaining position goes out of the question for the deserving student.

Colleges with the highest merit usually have no real contribution towards their students’ positions. The students rely solely on tuitions/coaching. In fact, these colleges even lack the basics, e.g., fans and lights. Their high status is simply because each year the cream of the crop rushes towards them, influenced by their so-called ‘merit’.

Hence, it is recommended that the CAP committee reverts to the previous system of zonal admissions so that merit is evenly distributed all over the city and all colleges get a fair chance to prove their worth instead of the same colleges bagging all the positions each year. Most importantly, it will ensure that there is no bias against students on the basis of their college.

ASRA AHMAD Karachi