CHENNAI: The Tamil Nadu Engineering Admission (TNEA) counselling ended on a positive note on Sunday, with 95,069 seats filled against last year’s 78,682. Around 62.6 per cent of the 1,51,871 seats in 440 engineering colleges across the State were filled, leaving only 56,802 seats vacant. Last year, it was 84,472, out of a total 1,63,154.
These figures hold immense significance as the colleges had been struggling to fill even 50 per cent of their seats over the past five years. “We expected more students to join engineering colleges this year as 100 per cent pass was recorded in Class 12,” said P Selvaraj, secretary of Consortium of Self-Financing Professional Arts and Science Colleges in Tamil Nadu.
According to the consortium, the trend would continue in the coming years. “The pandemic-induced digitisation has accelerated growth in the IT sector and there has been a significant rise in jobs. Moreover, the Make-in-India initiative also boosted entrepreneurship among people and the demand for engineers has increased,” said TD Eswaramoorthy, joint secretary of the consortium.
There, however, are about 100 colleges that filled less than 20 per cent of their seats during the counselling. “These colleges should be monitored by Anna University, their affiliating university, to ensure that the quality of education is not compromised. As these colleges will face problems in managing expenses, Anna University can support them by holding online classes by experts,” said career consultant Jayaprakash Gandhi.
According to data, at least 7,876 students were allotted seats under the newly launched 7.5 per cent reservation for government school students this year, while 473 students were allotted seats under the special reservation category.
After the completion of general counselling, the TNEA committee has now started the process for counselling for B.Arch. The rank list for B.Arch would be published on Monday (October 25) and the counselling would begin on October 27.
Special reservation category students will be eligible to do choice filling on October 27. Thereafter, tentative allotment of seats would be done on October 28 and provisional allotment on October 29. Choice filling for the General Category will start on October 29 and provisional allotment of seats would be done on November 1, said TNEA in charge, T Purushothaman.
B.Arch counselling
TNEA has now started the process for counselling for B.Arch, the rank list for which will be published on October 25 and the counselling will begin on October 27. Special reservation category students can fill choices on October 27.