Delhi University admissions: Fewer tie-breakers used this year due to ‘normalised' CUET scores

Indian Express

23-07-2025

This year, Delhi University (DU) has relied far less on tie-breaking rules while allocating seats to undergraduate applicants under the Common Seat Allocation System (CSAS), with officials attributing the shift to the National Testing Agency (NTA) providing 'normalised' Common University Entrance Test (CUET) scores up to seven decimal points instead of 'raw' scores, The Indian Express has learnt.
'Last year, the CUET scores provided by NTA were raw, and we had to apply tie-breaking criteria in many cases,' a senior DU official told The Indian Express. 'But this year, because of the precision of normalised scores, it became easier to allocate seats purely on CUET scores. Tie-breakers were used only in a few cases.'
Raw scores are initial marks obtained in each subject of the CUET, before normalisation or percentile calculation is undertaken.
Last year, if two students had the same CUET score for a particular course and college, DU had to dig deeper — compare their Class 12 marks, check their age, and in some cases, even go by whose name came first alphabetically — to decide who would get the seat.
This was because the scores shared by the NTA were raw, with overlaps being common.
But this year, the NTA gave scores precise to 7 decimal points — for example, 741.7355297 — which made it far less likely for two students to have exactly the same score. This meant DU could simply go by the CUET score in most cases, without needing to fall back on tie-breakers.
While DU has over 71,000 undergraduate seats, it has allocated 93,166 seats so far, suggesting that internal shifting and re-allocations will take place in subsequent rounds, as seen in earlier admission cycles. As of Monday evening, 80,015 students had accepted their allocations, and 31,088 applications had been approved by respective college principals.
In response to last year's challenges, DU had revised its tie-breaking criteria for the 2025-26 admissions. The alphabetical order of names, which was earlier the last resort, has now been replaced with Class 10 marks.
'Until last year, we were working with raw data and, in some cases, had to allocate seats alphabetically,' Haneet Gandhi, DU's Dean of Admissions, had told The Indian Express earlier.
'This year, we wanted a more rational and merit-based approach. So, we decided to use Class 10 marks. We take the average of all subjects to break ties. This ensures that meritorious students are considered without fail.'
In contrast, last year and in 2023, the alphabetical order of names was used in some cases as the final tie-breaking step. In 2023, The Indian Express had reported that DU had to rely more on tie breakers when compared to 2022, attributing this 'to higher CUET scores in 2023 as compared to 2022, which resulted in an increase in competition'.
Meanwhile, four years into the CUET-based admission process, BCom (Hons) continues to be the most sought-after programme at DU. The top college preference for BCom (Hons) remains Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC).
'We have allocated all our seats and are done with our admission process,' SRCC Principal Simrit Kaur said on Tuesday.
At Miranda House, North Campus, Principal Bijayalaxmi Nanda said, 'We have almost filled all our seats and will be completing the remaining admissions very soon.'
The college had received 1,482 applications by Tuesday evening, of which 1,360 had been approved and 12 rejected. The most in-demand subjects were Economics, Political Science, English, and Hindi.
Kirori Mal College Principal Dinesh Khattar said, 'We have almost filled all our seats. These were over 1,500 seats, and admissions will positively be closed by tonight for our college.'
This year, DU has received over 3.05 lakh undergraduate registrations — the highest since CUET was introduced for UG admissions.