Chemistry most sought after among MKU’s PG courses

MADURAI: The response for admissions at

Madurai Kamaraj University

(MKU) has been comparatively better for the upcoming academic year with the university receiving about 2,400 applications for the postgraduate courses. The total number of applications received is said to be at least 500 more than that of the previous year. But the longstanding issue of certain courses not being fancied by the candidates continues with less than five or no applications received for such courses.


It may be noted that poor admissions were cited by the university officials as a major reason for MKU not being able to break into the top 25 universities in the India Rankings 2019 declared by the

national institutional ranking framework

(NIRF) earlier this week. It was ranked 45th in the universities category. Initially, the response for admissions was said to have been lukewarm. “In fact, we started issuing applications from February 3 and had initially stated the last day of applying was March 25, but since there wasn’t enough interest in the first few days, we extended the deadline till April 5. There was an increased response eventually,” a source from the university said and added that they would now be accepting applications till April 12.

Among the 77 departments, chemistry received the highest applications (621), followed by physics (317), mathematics (213) and biotechnology (193). The courses which received nil or less than five applications included

Malayalam

, Telugu,

Kannada

, philosophy and religion, media communication and electronics instrumentation. Speaking to ToI about the upcoming admissions, vice-chancellor V Krishnan said he was happy at the improved response so far, but more measures would be taken to better the number of applications in future. “We can expect more number of applicants than 2,400 this year since we’ve only started issuing applications for the 11 new PG courses that are to be introduced in the upcoming academic year,” he added.


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