Sword Fencing, Sports quota, and scholarships
With sky-high percentage cut-offs in Delhi University, it has become exceedingly difficult for students with average marks to get admission in tier-I colleges of Delhi University.
The third cut – off list had a threshold of as high as 96% for all the popular courses in all the top colleges like SRCC, LSR, Ramjas, Kirori Mal. Ram Lal Anand College had a cut-off of 91.5% for BA (H) English, and for BA it was still at high of 85%.
Clearly, an average student would have no chance to score an admission even in a regular course in these colleges, getting the popular course would become a distant dream.
Sports Quota becomes a lifesaver for students who are at borderline of these high cut-offs in this extremely competitive era.
Traditionally Delhi University has known to be giving sports quota in popular games like weightlifting, tennis, cricket, and basketball – the games that are already extremely competitive and would have plenty of students racing for those countable seats under this quota.
Apart from these traditional and popular sports, students can apply for sports quota under domestically lesser known sports like Kayaking, canoeing, water polo and sword fencing sport. These sports are very exotic in nature and very well known at international level.
Most notable is sword fencing sport. It does come under exotic sports but recently has become very approachable and affordable in India. There are plenty of private institutes and clubs that provide classes to learn to fence.
Delhi University parks not more than 5% of the total number of seats in each course under quotas for sports and extracurricular activities making it all the more competitive even for these reserved seats if the student is coming from very well-known sports like tennis, cricket, and basketball.
If you are enrolling in sports like sword fencing, water polo, and others you would have fewer colleges to apply but higher chances to get admission.
Divya Beniwal from Jesus and Mary has been fencing for over 5 years now and has been trying to open DU level fencing classes. Click here to know more – http://bit.ly/2abiMOH
In 2016 DU admission sessions, they have conducted extensive sports trials to shortlist students under sports quota.
The process and details of the process mentioned above may change a little bit by next year. So it is always good to be subscribed to www.university.careers360.com site for latest updates
Sword – Fencing sports is offered in 7 colleges of Delhi University –
- Bhagini Nivedita College
- Deshbandu College
- Lakshmibai College
- Maitreyi College
- Sri Guru Teg Bahadur Khalsa College
- Shaheed Rajguru college Of Applied Science for women
- Vivekananda College
This list may change by next year so please do visit http://www.university.careers360.com/ for the latest list.
Other colleges/universities promoting sports in India
Besides Delhi University, SRM University, Tamil Nadu has been the top private university that provides sports scholarship to more than 100 students every year. Unfortunately, sword fencing is not part of their sports list as of today.
There are colleges that promote sports in India more than any other institute. Sports Authority of India (SAI), Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports (NSNIS) offer sports scholarships with an aim to promote sports in the country. They have high-end facilities for sports in their Patiala campus complemented by high levels of academic program tool. They provide the scholarship at all levels and grooms coaches too. And Good news – they do provide the course for swords fencing sports at all levels and grooms coaches in all disciplines of swords fencing – foil, epee, saber.
In 2014 Tamil Nadu Engineering Admission increased the seats under sports quota from 100 to 500, which in itself a great cultural shift in that region. Again good news here is – they do provide sports quota for sword fencing sports. You can refer the list of sports here – http://indiacollegefinder.org/courses/engineering/tamilnadu_engineering_admission_TNEA/sports_quota.php
Kerala also has the sound presence of fencing. They have 5 centers that provide fencing as a course –
- Central Stadium, Thiruvananthapuram
- Assumption College, Changanassserry
- Regional Sports Centre, Kadavanthara, Ernakulam
- Centralised Sports Hostel , Wayanad
- S.N.V.H.S.S, NR City, Idukki
Useful information on Delhi University sports quota
The admission process under sports quota as followed by DU in 2016 was –
- 43 categories of sports under which students can apply for trials
- Submit sports certificates of having played a particular sport at any level (School, Zonal, District, State, Nation or International) .
- The student would need to mark their choices of sport in an online registration form. Students had to pay an additional fee of Rs. 100 for this.
- Followed by registration, students have to go through fitness and would be given certificate upon qualification for trials.
- Qualified students go through the trials in different colleges under the supervision of sports committee which is made up of Principle, teachers of physical education, experts, the nominee from DU sports council and nominee of the vice-chancellor.
- 50 marks for certificates and 50 marks for trials. The student has to score at least 25 marks during trials to qualify for admission under sports quota.
- Students with international certificates (who represented the country at international level) would get direct admission.
- This year few colleges were authorized to conduct the test. All tests will take place on different dates so students don’t miss any opportunity.
- These tests are centralized. Students can give trial in one college and use the marks obtained to apply for all the colleges
International Colleges
Sword Fencing may not be a popular sport like football or Gymnastic at International level also, it doesn’t mean sword fencers do not a future or chance to get admission in international universities.
Like it has been a part of Olympic Games for over hundred years, it has been part of collegiate athletic programs for those many years. Not all universities offer it but universities of top ranks (not only in US but at international level) have Sword fencing part of their course curriculum – to name a few are Columbia, Penn State, Princeton, Notre Dame, Harvard St. John’s, MIT and UPenn. They have prestigious programs coupled with generous financial aid and scholarships to well-qualified fencers.
All these universities have strict criteria with respect to grades and academic achievements. Having a sword fencing background definitely adds value to your resume/profile and not only gets selected at these universities but also score financial aid for yourself.
These college-based scholarships are usually partial scholarships, as schools with lot importance on sports are more interested in having a strong fencing team rather than one strong player. So even if you don’t have any international medal you may still have the chance to be part their sword fencing team.
We have collected few scholarships for your reference –
- NCAA Scholarships – National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) provide approximately $3 billion in full and partial sports scholarships in a year to more than 126,000 undergraduates. This is more of a central scholarship program and you must meet requirements of NCAA to receive funding, at the same time these scholarships are awarded and administered by each academic institution.
- United State Fencing Association – they are government body for fencing in the United States and have plenty of scholarships available for its members through its membership club
- Besides these national level scholarship, there are individually funded scholarships like – Connor Porter Memorial Scholarship, Mike Lozano Scholarship
- 40 scholarships and grants to study at German sports university Cologne
Though getting cross country scholarship makes it all the more difficult to get financial aid. However, it always helps to have such strong experience in your bio.
You can stay in touch with –
- https://www.scholarships.com/financial-aid/college-scholarships/sports-scholarships/fencing-scholarships/
- http://www.collegescholarships.org/scholarships/sports/fencing.htm
- http://www.scholarshipstats.com/fencing.html
- http://www.mastersportal.eu/universities/scholarships/587/german-sport-university-cologne.html
- This list will provide the list colleges in Europe that provide financial aid to international students – http://www.topuniversities.com/student-info/scholarship-advice/scholarships-study-europe. However they are not specifically for fencing but assess students on their overall performance. Fencing would definitely get priority as top countries in fencing come from European territory like Italy, France etc.
- For Australia, China, New Zealand you can follow – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/2016-victoria-university-new-zealand-scholarships-china-kga-classes
- http://www.firstpointusa.com/scholarship/fencing
We will cover fencers who scored fencing/sports scholarships at national and international colleges.
