For thousands of Delhi University aspirants who just appeared for the CUET exam, the immediate relief of finishing is giving way to a new, more complex questionnaire: What next? Which college? Which course? Which campus - north or south? And what is a CSAS preference sheet?CUET almost done, DU seniors step in to guide new aspirantsThe admission processes can be difficult to navigate. Private counsellors are charging packages running anywhere from a few thousand to well over ten thousand rupees for what often turns out to be a handful of sessions and a PDF. some current students of the varsity watched this all play out last year and have pulled together a team of 25 current DU students from across colleges and departments and started CUET Decoded, a free, peer-run initiative aimed specifically at aspirants who feel like they are solving a puzzle without the box.Digvijay Singh Sulekh, a core member shares “The problem is that most students only start thinking about this after results are out. By then they are panicking. The planning has to start now, while there is still time to be rational about it,”The team is running free webinars and live Q&A sessions, both online and in person. Aspirants can ask questions in a group, reach out to any of the core members directly, or just lurk and absorb.But what separates it from a simple FAQ document is that the team is willing to go deeper than process. Another core member of the group says the conversations they are having go well beyond cutoffs and forms.“We are willing to sit with someone and talk about what they actually want to do with their life, what they are interested in, what activities they are good at outside academics. Even that gives you a clearer picture of which college culture will actually suit you,” says RiaThat kind of conversation is exactly what Priya Chandrakar, an aspirant from Raipur, was looking for and could not find anywhere. She came to CUET Decoded after spending days on forums that gave her more contradictory advice than clarity.“I do not know Delhi at all. I had no idea which colleges are in which part of the city, what the areas around them are like, whether they are safe to live near. Getting that from a student who actually studies there is completely different from reading a list online. I even got guidance on metro routes and accommodation options near the colleges I am considering. These feel like small things but they are the things that actually affect your daily life on campus.”