MUMBAI: The wait is finally over for students as colleges in the city have displayed their first merit list for admissions to their degree programmes.

While it was up by 2 to 10% in some colleges, others had lower cut-offs than those of last year.

In the first list released on Monday, the cut-off marks drawn by city colleges witnessed a mixed spectrum - ranging from no increase to percentages being up by 2-10% as compared to last year to cut-off marks being lowered by few slashes.

According to head of several colleges, though cut-offs were high by 80 to 90 pc for professional courses in top colleges, students with low percentages should not be losing hope.

"The overall results have been very good this year across all boards. Hence, the first merit list will have higher cut-offs. But that is not an indication. It will come down in the subsequent lists," felt Mithibai College principal Kiran Mangaonkar.

LS Raheja College principal MB Madlani also felt that, with mostly students scoring well this year, higher cut-offs in the first list was an obvious thing but the cut-off would come down, students with lesser scores will get admission into regular courses since all colleges first admit in-house students (those who have studied in the Std XII of affiliated junior college).

"But less-scoring students may have to compromise and probably won't get a professional course of their liking," she added. Similar response came from HR College principal Indu Shahani who said that it will be very difficult for students with fewer scores to get into professional programmes.

Most of city colleges also believed that once the students get through any good engineering or medical colleges, the real students-migration will happen and this will result in lowered cut-offs. Proving this development educationist KA Viswanathan, said, "Most MHT-CET students had blocked BMS, IT, Computer Science and Biotech seats. So once top scorers leave, the others will get a chance".