CHENNAI: After four rounds of the Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions (TNEA) counselling, 89,187 seats out of the total 1,51,871 available ones have been filled. That’s almost 59 per cent against last year’s 42. Moreover, after a gap of almost five years, private engineering colleges managed to fill over 50 per cent of seats.
According data, 1,63,154 seats were available last year, of which 78,682 seats were filled (48 per cent). This year’s figure, however, is likely to rise as supplementary counselling is yet to take place. “This year, we will get at least 30 per cent more aspirants than last year. In the supplementary counselling, we expect an enrolment of 12,000-15,000 aspirants,” said TD Eswaramoorthy, Joint Secretary of Consortium of Self-Financing Professional, Arts and Science Colleges.
Eswaramoorthy said factors like the boom in the IT sector, fewer engineering seats, and 100 per cent pass in Class 12 exam helped the colleges better their admission figures. “Many engineering colleges reduced seats in their core subjects like mechanical and civil and opened new courses in computer science and IT-related courses. This helped them cater to the demand for computer science among aspirants,” he added.
Educationists said seats would remain vacant in engineering colleges this year as well, but it would be way fewer than previous years. “Since 2016, we have been seeing engineering colleges struggling to fill their seats as the availability of seats was high. This year, however, the craze of computer science is so much that aspirants are ready to pay capitation fee even in tier III colleges to ensure a seat,” said career consultant, Jayaprakash Gandhi. “Last year, only 59 colleges managed to fill over 80 per cent of their seats, this year the figure is 113,” he added.
Deadline extended
TNEA extended last date for registration for supplementary counselling to October 19. “Due to holidays, many might have faced difficulties in participating in the online registration. Keeping that in mind, the last date has been extended to October 19,” said TNEA in charge T Purushothaman