The online revolution in city colleges may have changed the rules of the game in mission admission, but there is no respite from queues, chaos and confusion for the students, as they hop from one campus to another to book a berth in the college of their choice. More than two lakh students from various boards — higher secondary, CBSE and ISC — are competing for a lakh seats in 104-odd colleges in and around Calcutta.

“The idea of online availability of admission forms is great. But I faced major difficulties in accessing the web-sites of colleges. Maybe because of the increased traffic,” said Moumita Pal, waiting in the queue at Jadavpur University (JU) to submit the admission form, which she downloaded on Monday morning. But Rima Mukherjee’s attempts at downloading a form for her daughter drew a blank, which forced her to visit the JU campus all the way from Howrah.

“There was a long queue and I waited for around three hours. But I couldn’t wait any longer and came back. I will give it a try tomorrow,” recounted the mother, after spending a full day collecting forms. To tackle the problems of form distribution, some of the premier city colleges — like Presidency and St Xavier’s — have introduced online form-downloading facility this year. Forms in some institutions, like Asutosh College and JU, are available both online and on the campuses.

But the online solution is hardly yielding the desired results and the benefits — if any — have remained restricted to a handful of tech-savvy parents and students. “I have come from Bagnan to collect forms for my daughter…. But now, they are telling me that the forms are only available online,” said Ashim Pandit, at Presidency College. The middle-aged man, on the wrong side of the digital divide, set out for a cybercafe for the first time in his life. “Dekhi, form download kotha theke ki hoi (Let me see, how and where I can download a form),” murmured Pandit.

If Pandit’s problem was accessing the websites, many others — on the right side of the digital divide — were found complaining about incomplete and unclear information on the sites. “The online system does not make much of a difference if one has to travel from college to college to clarify matters,” said a student of Patha Bhavan, in Presidency College to clear her doubts. And as the students went on college-hopping — beating the heat and dust — their litany of woes grew.

“It is so surprising, the subject combinations for an honours course vary across colleges,” said Sudakshina Das, who visited four colleges and had seen enough. But in most cases, the authorities claimed that there was no room for any confusion. “We have tried to take care of the problems. We have kept a help desk for the students,” said Mamata Roy, principal, Presidency College. The authorities of St Xavier’s College claimed that their system was fool-proof. “We have three years of experience in online form distribution. A lot of research and monitoring goes into the process to make it effective and hassle-free,” said Shalabh Aggarwal, lecturer and systems-in-charge, St Xavier’s College.