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Delhi University (DU) authorities were flooded with calls on Tuesday from students worried that their forms for an entrance test for English (honours) would be rejected.

The flurry of calls, coming a full day after the university stopped accepting forms for the Combined Aptitude Test for English or CATE, is a pointer to the fierce competition among students to secure a spot in the prestigious programme at DU. From this year, the forms will be screened online, raising fears among students that they could be rejected if they have made any careless mistake while filling it.

Till last year, the forms were screened manually.

Seventeen top DU colleges pick students for their English (honours) course through CATE. Monday was the last date to submit the form for the test scheduled on June 9. While the university sold over 9,500 forms this year, it has received 9,000 forms.

“ We have received all the forms submitted by students. But as this year there will be a computerised screening, forms not filled up properly might be rejected by the computer,” said Madhumita Chakraborty, associate professor of English at Zakir Husain College.

“ Students and their parents are requesting us to accept the forms even after the last date has passed. Students from the National Capital Region ( NCR) and Gurgaon are calling up, asking if DU has any information centre there. The course is really popular among students,” she added.

The colleges under CATE, after screening the forms, will prepare a list of roll numbers and issue admit cards on June 5 for the test. “ The admit cards will be posted on DU’s website, from where stu- dents can take printouts. Colleges where the students will take the test will get the hard copies of the admit cards,” Chakraborty said.

Turns out, many students could not submit the form on time. Some private websites they accessed informed them that June 5 is the last date to submit the form.

“ Students must always visit DU’s official website for relevant information,” Chakraborty said.

The entrance test will have the same pattern as last year, only the evaluation pattern will be different.

The 100- mark test will comprise multiplechoice questions to assess vocabulary, grammar, language skills and literary knowledge of the candidates as well as questions in comprehension and essay writing. The paper’s part- I will test linguistic skills and part- II will assess their creative writing. There will be no interviews.

The objective- type paper is in OMR format that will be evaluated by the computer.

“ The scripts are generally evaluated manually as well as electronically. But we will be implementing a different pattern of evaluation this time. For Other Backward Caste ( OBC) candidates, all the copies will be evaluated manually as well as electronically.

But in the case of general candidates, we will have a cut- off to decide which copies will be evaluated manually,” professor Sumanyu Satpathy, head of the university’s English department said.

“ This is for the first time that an elimination round has been introduced in order to maintain quality,” she added.