Bangalore:
If you are a girl hoping to get into a co-educational college in Bangalore, you just might find it tougher than you thought.
These colleges have a 50:50 seat allotment for boys and girls. Now girls usually do much better than boys in exams, but have to fight it out for the 50 percent seats reserved for them. They score higher marks, so the bar has to be lowered for the boys to fill up the 50 per cent of seats allotted to them.
"That's not fair. Girls are scoring higher, that's their hard work," says Shweta Sharma, a student. Her aunt, Suma Prasad adds, "Naturally, the girls will feel bad... when boys having lower marks get admission and girls slog all day and they don't get admission in good colleges, they feel very bad."
The boys are not turning down the helping hand they now seem to need. "Girls are often considered intelligent when compared to boys. I am from commerce and from the same college. When I joined, the cut-off for Commerce students for boys was 84 per cent and for girls 88 per cent," said Ajay, a student.
Even college authorities admit it is unfair. "We surely support the girls. It is in fact a disadvantage for the girls because they have scored better than the boys. Maybe the girls have to perform a little poor if they want to compete with the boys," says Dr Sree Srivatsa, Principal, MES pre-university college.
If there is a price to be paid for doing well, it is here.