CHENNAI: At the end of supplementary counselling of Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions, 71.17% of academic seats have been filled leaving 41,703 seats vacant. According to experts, a total of 1,02,949 students have been admitted to engineering colleges which is higher than the previous year. The total number of seats available for academic counselling is 1,44,652 seats.
Most of the vacant seats were from branches like civil, mechanical and other secondary courses like agriculture engineering, biomedical engineering, food technology and aeronautical engineering among others. The number of students who preferred marine engineering was also lesser this year as only 8.63 per cent of seats were filled. In Tamil medium, only 23.16% of mechanical engineering and 42.59% of civil engineering seats were filled. A total of 24 colleges managed to fill 100% of their seats of which eight were self-financing colleges. A total of 42 colleges out of 440 had admitted students with a cut-off above 160, 313 colleges admitted those with a cut-off above 120 and 127 colleges admitted those with a cut-off below 120.
“Colleges with cut-off above 160 can be considered top preferences for students with high scoring Class 12 examination. Colleges that admit students with an average cut-off of less than 120 will find it challenging to get into good companies to recruit their students through campus placements. A total of 14 government institutions, mostly university colleges of engineering, had admissions with less than the average cut-off of 150,” said career consultant Jayaprakash Gandhi.