New Delhi: Students aspiring to join the SAARC-established South Asian University can now apply from the comfort of their study table or a park bench or for that matter their college canteen. The university has introduced online forms from this year for admission into various Masters as well as Ph.D. programmes.
The introduction of the online forms will considerably simplify the application procedure for thousands of students from the SAARC region. SAU gets almost all of its students from the eight member nations of the SAARC, each country having a specific quota of students they can send.
“Students don’t have to run around for the demand draft and scratch their heads for paying any extra money for the currency conversion for registration fee, like we did when we applied,” Sharif Hazoori, a final year International Relations student from Afghanistan said. He opined that it would encourage more students from his country to apply. Students, who do not have access to internet banking, credit card or a debit card, can still apply through the offline mode by downloading the application forms from the university website.
SAU’s President Prof. GK Chadha, looking quite upbeat about the introduction of the online forms, said, “This couldn’t have happened at a more appropriate time for us. Since we are introducing our Ph.D. Programmes in all the departments and faculties, we are expecting a large influx of applications. The initial response to our online application has been tremendous, to put in mildly.”
The university will admit students for its fourth academic year in the Masters level in Applied Mathematics, Biotechnology, Computer Science, Development Economics, International Relations and Legal Studies. There are 30 seats in each of these programmes. The number of seats for Ph.D., though, vary from programme to programme.
SAU decided to advance the admission by two months. It usually announces admission in the month of March. The reason behind this decision was to give more time to the students to prepare for their travel to India including their visa, said Prof. Rajiv Saxena, the Vice President of the university. Students from SAARC countries get a special multiple entry visa called SAU visa.
The university has also opened an admission blog dedicated to the aspirants. The blog has, among other things, the detailed information about the courses, admission procedure, videos and the details of Student Admission Volunteers, to whom an aspirant can ask questions and clarify their doubts.
While the last date of accepting applications is the 25th of February 2013, the SAARC-wide entrance test for both Masters & Ph.D. programmes is scheduled for the 24th of March 2013.