CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu Engineering Admission (TNEA) on Sunday, October 3, 2021, released the tentative allotment of seats for students who participated in the first round of counselling. Analysing the data, experts have advised students waiting to participate in the second round, to give over 150 to 200 options of courses and colleges during the choice filling.
The online choice filling for second round will start from October 5. According to experts, in the first round itself, students have been allocated seats that were their 65th or 70th options. “As there will be more students in the second round, the competition will be tougher, hence students should give not less than 200 options while filling in the choices,” said career consultant Jayaprakash Gandhi.
In the first round, 14,788 students — almost double the number seen last year — participated in counselling while in the second round, 30,438 students will be in the fray. “This year, the number of high scorers has increased significantly which has led to hardship for students. If enough choices are not given, many meritorious students will not be able to get seat of their choice,” said Gandhi.
Last year, the number of students scoring above the cut-off of 150 marks in TNEA was only around 32,000 while this year, it is over 1 lakh. However, giving 200 or more options will not be easy for students, especially for rural aspirants. “There is no concrete information available on basis of which students can decide their options.
Last year’s cut-off figures of different colleges just cannot be taken into consideration by students during choice filling as there will be huge variations in marks and number of students this year. Students have to just select randomly. It’s a complete blind game,” said education consultant D Nedunchezhian. “Meritorious first-generation learners and rural students will be worst affected and denied seats in good government colleges as it is simply not possible for them to give so many options. They will not be aware about colleges and courses,” he added.
According to Nedunchezhian, if the government intends to ensure that 7.5% reservation for government school students is utilised properly and underprivileged students are able to get admission in premier government colleges, then it should bring back the single window system of admission. “In the single window system, students will directly come to the counselling centres and select their preferred college as per the availability. This process will be much easier and beneficial for students,” he said.