EDUCATION

CBSE toppers set to dominate admissions
Chitleen K Sethi
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 26
Having scored exceptionally high marks this year, Class XII passouts of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) are ruling the roost in all top colleges of the region. In loss are students of state boards, very few of whom have scored marks at par with the CBSE and stand a chance of finding a berth in good colleges in Chandigarh or New Delhi.

This year at least over 200 students of the CBSE in Chandigarh and surrounding areas, including Panchkula and Mohali, have scored over 90 per cent marks in Class XII. As compared to this, only four students of the Punjab School Education Board have scored above 90 per cent marks this year. While there are thousands of CBSE students in the 80 per cent to 90 per cent range, only 800 Punjab School Education Board passouts fall within this range of marks.

“This is a virtual reversal of an earlier trend when CBSE students would score less than state board students due to strict marking. But the CBSE has now become very liberal in giving marks to its students,” said Mrs S.K. Saroya, Controller of Examinations, Punjab School Education Board.

“It is true that the CBSE has for the past two three years consistently tried to make its examinations scoring. Practical modules have been introduced in many subjects to help the candidates score better. But it is also a fact that state boards have failed to deliver the goods overburdening the CBSE,” said Mr D.R. Yadav, Regional Director, CBSE.

Very few options are left with the state board students for admission to colleges in Chandigarh, which are considered most coveted in Punjab and North Haryana. Chandigarh (UT) reserves 85 per cent of the seats in colleges for their own students.

Since most schools in Chandigarh are affiliated to the CBSE, majority of the seats are filled with CBSE candidates. Punjab School Education Board students and students from the School Board of Education, Haryana, do not stand much chance even in the 15 per cent general pool where they face all India competition and the cut-off percentage is generally much higher than the 85 per cent reserved pool percentages.

“Students from Panchkula and Mohali rush to take admissions in UT schools immediately after Class X to be part of the 85 per cent reservation pool. However, students from smaller cities in the rest of Punjab and Haryana are competing to get admissions here and this year if they are from the state boards, they do not stand a chance,” added Mrs Saroya.

Virtual Instrumentation Centre opened
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 26
Dr Vijay Gupta, Director, Punjab Engineering College (PEC), today inaugurated the Virtual Instrumentation Centre at the college. The first training programme for the PEC faculty has commenced at the center and will continue up to June 30. This programme is being conducted by Dr Sanjay Gupta, Chief Scientific Officer (Research Professor) from IIT Kanpur, and experts from National Instruments.

Virtual instrumentation provides an environment where instruments like a digital voltmeter, digital counter, or oscilloscope are available on screen as Graphical User Interface as a part of the LabVIEW Software Package. The primary benefits of using data acquisition technology to configure virtual instrumentation include cost, size, and flexibility and ease of programming. The cost to configure a virtual instrumentation-based system using a data acquisition board or cards can be as little as 25 per cent of the cost of a conventional instrument. The conventional instruments as compared to a virtual instrumentation can be very large and cumbersome. They also require a lot of power, and often have excessive amounts of features that are rarely, if ever used. Most conventional instruments do not have any computational power. Since the virtual instrument is part of a computer, the computer’s computational as well as controlling capability can be applied to a test configuration.

Virtual instruments are used in a large numbers of businesses that require quality assurance to ensure that the manufactured product is stable and meets industry requirements. These types of controls are frequently found in industrial processes, engineering, and most facets of modern technology, including, but not limited to, appliances, automobiles, and electronics. Instrumental controls range from common objects, like a digital scale, to more specialised devices, such as a laser sensor.

The centre will be used by BE students for their project work, by postgraduate students for developing instrumentation and to carry out research activities leading to their dissertation. The centre shall be a value addition in the institute for consultancy jobs. This will also act as incubation facility in virtual instrumentation in this part of the country.

Commerce courses top charts
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 26
While commerce seems to be topping the charts in the city with colleges flooded with over 5000 applications for BCom course, the city is also witnessing a resurgence of the BCA course after a gap of over five years. Also coveted are the various graduate and postgraduate biotechnology and bioinformatics courses being offered by some colleges. However, this year seems to have also sounded the death-knell of the once coveted MSc IT course.

Students have preferred the SD College, Sector 32, over all others for admission to BCom course. Over 2100 applications have been received in the college for a mere 140 seats. DAV college, Sector 10, comes second with 1700 applications but for 210 seats. The MCM DAV College has received over 1,300 applications and the SGGS College, Sector 26, has received over 1,200 applications followed by the Government College, Sector 11, where over 1000 applications have been received for the course.

The neck-to-neck competition among some of these colleges continues in the two BSc courses in biotechnology. Over 850 applications have been received for 30 seats in Government College, Sector 11, in the course while DAV College has received over 700 applications, SD college has received 600 applications and SGGS College over 320.

Children’s workshop ends with gala function
Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, June 26
The Jack and Jill Hilltop Club's second 10-day workshop concluded yesterday on the Vivek Nursery and Preparatory School premises. The gala function, that was held at Jayanti Majri, was attended by children of the first and second batch, along with their parents and friends.

The first batch was started on the May 22 and due to the overwhelming response, the second batch was started on June 15. On the last day, the children were given certificates from Principal Sunaiyna Dass.

The grand finale started with a play put up by kids. It was called ''Khada'' and was prepared by a local theatre group Manch Tantra followed by poem recitations and dances. The kids also displayed their creative work by exhibiting pots, strawmen, ropes, ''chuggis'' and many such items that they made in the 10-day workshop.

Sunaiyna Dass, along with Divya Bansal, co-ordinator, is evolving a new system for kids to escape from monotonous life either on weekends. ''We have started a system of memberships whereby a child between 4 and 16 can apply for it by depositing Rs 300 a month. Every weekend we promise to give the kids a gala time with lot of fun, excitement and refreshments'', says Ms Dass.