LAHORE: The University of the Punjab has opened the second phase of its undergraduate admissions from Tuesday, inviting applications for seats still vacant after a first phase that has already outstripped last year’s full-year intake.
According to the university administration, more than 12,766 admissions were confirmed in Phase I of the current session. The comparison is striking: in the previous academic year, both phases combined produced 11,112 admissions. The university intends to fill a total of 14,000 seats across its undergraduate degree programmes, leaving roughly 1,200 places to be allocated in the round that opens today.
Candidates who missed the first phase, or who were not offered a seat in their preferred discipline, may now apply against the remaining vacancies. Seat availability will vary sharply by department, with high-demand programmes in computer science, business administration and the health-allied sciences expected to close early, while several basic-science, humanities and language programmes typically retain capacity deeper into the cycle.
Applicants are advised to monitor the university’s official admissions portal for merit lists and departmental cut-offs rather than relying on informal channels, and to keep documentation — matriculation and intermediate result cards, domicile and CNIC or B-Form — ready for verification at the time of offer.
Vice Chancellor Dr Muhammad Ali said the increase in admissions reflected candidates’ confidence in the university’s academic standards. He said Punjab University was delivering the best available education at the lowest fee structure in the country, and that the institution awarded more scholarships and subsidies to its students than any comparable public-sector university.
The Vice Chancellor’s framing points to the central economic reality of higher education in Punjab. With household budgets squeezed by inflation and energy costs, the fee differential between public and private universities has become the decisive factor for a large number of families. Public-sector institutions with subsidised tuition, hostel provision and need-based support have consequently seen application volumes rise even as some private campuses report softening enrolment.
Established in 1882, the University of the Punjab is the oldest public university in Pakistan and among the oldest in South Asia. It operates multiple campuses in Lahore — Quaid-i-Azam (New) Campus, Allama Iqbal (Old) Campus, and the Gujranwala campus — across more than a dozen faculties, and its affiliated-colleges network extends across a wide swathe of central Punjab.
The university’s shift in recent years to the four-year Associate Degree and BS structure, in line with Higher Education Commission policy, has reshaped the undergraduate admissions map, funnelling students who once entered through affiliated-college BA/BSc routes directly into university departments. That structural change is one reason intake figures have climbed year on year.
Among parents and candidates queueing at admission offices in recent weeks, the recurring concerns are familiar: the compression of the admissions calendar after delayed intermediate results, the cost of applying to multiple institutions simultaneously, and uncertainty over hostel accommodation for out-of-city students. Education-sector observers have repeatedly urged Punjab’s public universities to publish seat-wise vacancy data at the start of each phase so that applicants are not forced to guess where their marks might land.
The university has not announced a closing date for Phase II beyond the standard advertised window; candidates are advised to treat the first published deadline as final.
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