CHENNAI: With Tamil Nadu Engineering Admission (TNEA) counseling for general category students starting from Monday, engineering colleges are expecting a marginal rise in the demand for traditional courses like mechanical and civil engineering this year.
College officials and academicians said the first round of counselling for special category engineering applicants (government schoolstudents, candidates with disabilities, ward of ex-servicemen and eminent sportsperson) that concluded on Friday saw good demand for mechanical and civil seats.
“At least 6,442 students were allotted seats under the special category by TNEA and among them, 853 students have opted for mechanical engineering while 334 students preferred civil engineering. The figure is quite surprising as in previous years demand of these subject have remained abysmally low,” said career consultant Jayaprakash Gandhi.
Joint secretary of Consortium of Self-Financing Professional, Arts and Science Colleges in Tamil Nadu, TD Eswaramoorthy, said, “Compared to previous years, this year might see lesser number of vacant seats in traditional courses.” He added learning from previous years’ experience, this year many colleges have reduced their seats in these subjects as well.
This year, academicians also advised students to lock in as many choices as they could while filling the list of their preferable courses and colleges during the counseling as competition is very tough. “Many government schoolstudents were not allotted seats in the first round as they had not given an adequate number of choices.
At least 11,390 applicants could have availed of 7.5 per cent horizontal quota according to their rank list, but the provisional allotment was made to only 5,837 government schoolstudents,” said Gandhi. The general category will continue from September 27 to October 17.