St Xavier’s College will assess final semester undergraduate and postgraduate students following the government advisory and giving 80 per cent weightage to the best performance in previous semesters and 20 per cent weightage to final semester internal assessments.

For three-year undergraduate courses, the 80 per cent weightage will be factored in from any of the previous five semesters in which students have obtained the highest aggregate, Father Dominic Savio, principal of St Xavier’s College, said.

As for the two-year postgraduate courses, the best aggregate percentage of the three previous semesters will be taken into account.

At St Xavier’s, final semester students are mostly required to submit a dissertation and appear for a viva voce examination.

All final semester students had to submit the dissertation and they appeared for the viva voce exam through an online process even this time, the principal said.

“The 80 per cent weightage to the best performance in previous semesters will be
given in the theory papers. As for the dissertation and the viva voce, the real marks will be taken into account,” he said.

The same formula will apply for the BEd and five-year integrated courses.

St Xavier’s is an autonomous college and enjoys the freedom to conduct its own exams, follow its own evaluation system and frame its own syllabus. The degrees awarded to students bear the signature of Calcutta University to which it was affiliated till 2006.

But the college decided to adopt the government advisory as the institution found it more suitable for majority of the students.

According to the principal, the college had initially planned its own formula to assess its students.

A discussion was held among teachers of the college if 50 per cent weightage could be given to previous semesters, 20 per cent to internal assessments. The remaining 30 per cent weightage had been planned for home assignments, in which students were to be asked to write a paper on a particular topic in each subject.

Later, the plan was dropped in the interest of some students who stay in faraway places and have been hit by the present situation, Savio said.