Career Week, 2014: Changes at Delhi University and other competitive examinations by Pratham

As a part of Career Week, on 13 October 2014, a workshop with Pratham was organised for Commerce and Humanities students. Pratham is an institute powered by IIFM which prepares students for various entrance examinations, and has produced top rankers year after year. Mr Ankit Kapoor, Director at Pratham visited us to share some important information regarding admissions and the competition involved that all of us would need to face in the near future.

The workshop started out with Mr. Kapoor providing an insight into eligibility criteria for entering Delhi University. We were surprised to hear the statistics- there are about 54,000 seats at Delhi University, of which around 27,000 are reserved. What was more surprising was, that, 3,06,000 students pass out each year from the CBSE Board in Delhi alone! By sharing these statistics he made us realise the amount of competition that we have to face! Besides this, he said, of the 65 colleges within Delhi University, 23 are reserved for girls.

As the workshop proceeded, he informed us about the numerous changes that have taken place at DU over the last 2-3 years; one of the major changes being the introduction and abolition of the FYUP, or the Four Year Undergraduate Programme that had been introduced in 2013, and subsequently done away with this year. Other changes that have occurred are, the introduction of BMS in 2013. This is Bachelor of Management Studies, which is a combination of BBS, BBE and BFIAS; these three were discontinued in 2013, and reintroduced in 2014.

Mr. Kapoor told us about the procedure to apply for the top universities. For Management, he spoke about courses such as BBS, BFIA and BBE in the top colleges, namely, Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies, Symbiosis, Narsee Monjee, IIM Indore, etc. For Law, he spoke about the common law admission test, known as CLAT. 15 colleges offer CLAT, which include NLU, Bangalore, Symbiosis, Christ University, IP University, etc. For hotel management, the Oberoi is the best in its field. Thethe eligibility for Oberoi is a practical aptitude test in which one has to manage various activities, there is no feeinvolved and one learns through work experience. He also threw light on Mass Communication as well as language courses.

[gallery] The concluding part of the workshop included a personality test. There were 6 columns in 3 categories to be filled with two options each. The scores had to be totalled, and based on those scores we were told our personality traits and career options that were best suited for us. Most people are one of six personality-types: Realistic, Investigative,Artistic, Social, Enterprising,and Conventional. It was surprising to notice, that many of us got career options suiting our personality traits many of which we had never thought of!

The motive of this exercise was to find the parity between our desired choices and personality traits.The workshop was highly informative. Not only did we learn about new careers, but in the process we discovered more about ourselves.

Ojasvi Jain XII B and Mehar Kaur XI-C.