CBSE re-evaluation muddle swallows students’ foreign admissions, scholarships and IIT dreams

PUNE: Anvi Sharma from Pune is racing against time to secure her admission to a leading Canadian university, where she has been awarded a merit scholarship for an undergraduate engineering programme.

The university wants her XII standard mark sheet before confirming the scholarship, but her re-evaluation request is stuck after she alleged discrepancies in her CBSE score.

In Bengaluru, Rohan Mehta fears losing admission to a Singapore-based technology programme because verification of his revised marks may not arrive before the enrolment deadline.

Delhi student Manpreet Singh, who secured a partial scholarship for a data science course in the UK, says uncertainty over his board marks has placed both her admission and financial aid package in jeopardy.

A growing number of students have said that the glitches linked to CBSE’s On-Screen Marking (OSM) evaluation system have landed their higher education plans into uncertainty.

While the public debate has largely focused on IIT, NIT and IIIT admissions, students and parents said that the students going for admission to foreign universities that offer scholarships operate on strict timelines and conditional grade requirements.

With re-evaluation requests, photocopy applications and verification processes still underway, many fear they could lose opportunities they spent years working towards.

The concern stems from widespread complaints of blurred answer-sheet scans, claims of unchecked responses, missing pages and technical problems in the re-evaluation process following the declaration of CBSE Std XII results.

Students claim unexpectedly low scores in key subjects have affected not only scholarship eligibility abroad but also their ability to satisfy the mandatory 75% aggregate criterion required for admission to IITs through JEE Advanced and several NIT and IIIT programmes.

As counselling schedules advance and overseas admission deadlines approach, thousands of students find themselves trapped between pending re-evaluation outcomes and life-changing academic decisions.

“I had a conditional admission offer from a university in Canada with a scholarship linked to my Std XII performance. My predicted grades and internal assessments were strong, but my final CBSE marks dropped sharply in two subjects. The scholarship was withdrawn before I could even complete the verification process,” said a Pune student, requesting anonymity.

A Mumbai-based student, Gizelle Rodricks, who had secured admission to an undergraduate engineering programme in Singapore said, “The university wanted final board results before confirming enrolment. There is a substantial difference between my expected and awarded marks. By the time the re-evaluation process is completed, I may miss the admission deadline altogether.”

Parents said that the financial impact due to this delay by CBSE could be devastating on them.

“My daughter received a partial scholarship from a UK university. The offer required a specific aggregate percentage. She missed it by a few marks in one subject where several answers appear to have gone unchecked in the scanned copy. We are now facing the possibility of paying a few lakh rupees more or losing the admission entirely,” said Mohan Kulkarni, a Pune parent.

After giving up on overseas opportunities due to the delayed verification and re-evaluation process by the CBSE, many students are turning their attention to domestic admissions, where another hurdle awaits: the mandatory 75% aggregate eligibility criteria for admission to IITs through JEE Advanced and to several NIT and IIIT programmes.

“I cleared JEE (Advanced) after two years of preparation. Now I may not get into an IIT because my board marks that do not reflect what I actually wrote in the examination,” said Sarthak Banerjee, an aspirant from Noida.

Students claim that technical difficulties on CBSE’s re-evaluation portal have delayed access to photocopies and verification requests at a time when admission and scholarship deadlines are rapidly approaching.

Ketaki Lad from Solapur said, “Authorities need not relax merit but they must acknowledge that technical failures during evaluation can destroy a student’s future. They should also extend the deadline for application of re-evaluation because their portal is haywire and several applicants are facing problems.”

The anxiety is acute among students who have already qualified for highly competitive entrance examinations.

“A student can crack JEE (Advanced), one of the toughest examinations in the country, but still lose admission because of a handful of disputed board marks. That contradiction is difficult for families to understand,” said, Varun Tyagi, a senior coaching mentor from Bengaluru.

Flood of concerns online

Students argue that the issue is not about reducing academic standards but ensuring genuine evaluation errors are corrected before life-changing opportunities are lost.

“We are becoming victims of an experiment that went wrong,” a student wrote on X. “Allow provisional admissions until re-evaluation results are declared. If mistakes are later corrected, institutions can verify eligibility without forcing students to lose an entire year,” said another student on social media.

“We worked for years to earn this. Whether it is an IIT seat, an NIT admission or a scholarship abroad, we should not lose our future because a scanned answer sheet failed to capture what we wrote,” said Shreya Ghosh, a student awaiting re-evaluation.

Extension till June 7 declared

The CBSE late on Friday extended the deadline for submission of applications for verification and re-evaluation of questions for Std XII examinations to June 7 following technical glitches in the portal for the past 3-4 days. IIT-Roorke, in a late-night announcement, said students can enter counselling rounds and send revised marksheets later.