CHENNAI: Counselling for Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions (TNEA) will start on July 22 and conclude on September 11, announced the Directorate of Technical Education (DoTE) on Wednesday, after releasing the rank list of 1.99 lakh students.
Thosithaa Lakshmi N of Sri Sankara Vidyalaya, Chengalpattu, topped the list, while Nilanjana K of Tirunelveli and Gokul of Namakkal bagged the second and third positions.
Of the top 10 rank holders — all of whom scored a perfect 200 cutoff — six are girls.
However, the overall number of perfect cutoffs has dropped this year (65) compared to last year (102).
Of the 36,532 students who had applied under the 7.5% reservation for government school students, 32,223 were found eligible to attend the counselling process. This includes 16,793 girls, 15,428 boys, and two trans persons. S Ravani of Model School, Veerapandi, Salem, stood first in this category, with a cutoff of 199.5.
While releasing the rank list, DoTE commissioner K Veera Raghava Rao announced that online counselling for the 7.5% quota seats will be conducted on July 22 and 23. Counselling for other reservation categories such as differently abled, kin of ex-servicemen, and sports quota will take place between July 25 and 27.
The counselling process for general category students will begin on July 29 and will go on till September 3. Supplementary counselling will be conducted between September 6 and 8, with the entire process expected to be completed by September 11.
Counselling for general category students will take place in three rounds. Students with cutoffs between 179 and 200 will attend the first round, those falling in the 142-178.9 range will take part in the second round, and candidates who have scored between 77.5 and 141.9 will attend the third and final round.
This year, 2.53 lakh students had registered for TNEA, of which 2.09 lakh had paid the registration fee. After certificate verification, 1,99,868 were found eligible to participate in the counselling process. In 2023, DoTE released a rank list for 1.78 lakh eligible students.
There are 440 engineering colleges in the state and DoTE officials said the entire matrix of colleges with the number of seats available in each branch will be updated on their official website by July 15.
Candidates with grievances regarding the rank list can approach DoTE and their grievances will be addressed between July 11 and 20.