CHENNAI:The Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions (2015) counselling for admission to BE/BTech courses which began on Wednesday threw no surprises after nine out of 10 toppers chose the prestigious College of Engineering, Guindy (CEG) to pursue higher education.
Surprisingly, there were no takers in the top 10 for Anna University’s other affiliated colleges in the city like the MIT in Chromepet, going against the trend in recent years. The lone candidate who chose differently went for the government-aided private college in Coimbatore, PSG College of Technology.
Only three candidates from the top 15 of the original rank list appeared for counselling. T Keerthibalan of Sulur in Coimbatore, who had secured the first rank, chose Mechanical Engineering at CEG. When asked to comment on his choice of institution, Keerthibalan said though he could have preferred to stay at Coimbatore, the kind of exposure he could have access to by studying in CEG was too much for him to ignore.
Four students in the top 10 chose Mechanical Engineering at CEG, reiterating the stream’s evergrowing popularity among students, and another four chose Electronics and Communication Engineering. One student chose Computer Science Engineering and J Karthick Raja of Tiruchengode in Namakkal, who chose PSG College, preferred the Electrical and Electronics Engineering stream.
So what made him choose PSG when he had the chance to get into CEG and Raja, the son of a provision shop owner, said that for him it was a big deal to be moving to Coimbatore from Namakkal as it was for others to be moving to Chennai.
B Shreyas of Chennai, who chose CSE, said that mobile technology had always fascinated him. “I want to be an app developer and I chose CEG because it is a recognised institution worldwide. Having CEG as my alma mater when I move abroad for further studies or work would help greatly,” he said.
State Minister for Higher Education, P Palaniappan, handed out the admit cards to the toppers alongside Secretary for Department of Higher Education, Apoorva and Anna University vice chancellor M Rajaram.