CHENNAI: Directorate of Technical Education (DoTE) will release the rank list for Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions (TNEA) on Tuesday. Engineering aspirants are waiting for it with bated breath as experts expect a significant rise in the cut-off mark this year.Class 12 results were almost 100 per cent this year in both CBSE and State Board streams, and with phenomenal rise in the number of top scorers, the cut-off mark for TNEA is expected to be an all-time high.
According to experts, the cut -off mark is likely to increase by 5 to even 50 marks in various bands this year as the number of top scorers is quite high. Last year, only 1,867 science stream students scored above 90 per cent, but this year the figure is over 30,000.
Career consultant Jayaprakash Gandhi said the rise in cut-off mark will vary in different bands – for 190 and above, there will be 1 to 5 marks of increase, while for 180 to 190 mark band, the expected rise in cut-off mark is from 9 to 23 marks. But, there will be a major rise in the 170-180 band as there will be a large number of students in it.
“Last year, in the 170-to-180-marks band, there were only 6,000 students but this year we are expecting the figure to be 32,000. In this band, we expect the cut-off to rise from 30 to 45 marks. The competition will be very tough this year,” said Gandhi.
This year, a student with 190 marks may get a rank above 9,000 as compared to 3,445 last year, he added.
P Mannar Jawahar, Vice-Chancellor of Karunya Institute of Technology and Sciences, said: “Each decimal point will count this time. In the rank list tomorrow, there will be no fewer than 10 students in the top slot itself, scoring above 199 marks.”
Even the DoTE officials expect a rise in the cut-off this year. “Looking at the scores and number of applications this year, it is quite evident that there will be a significant rise in the cut-off mark in the TNEA rank list,” said TNEA Secretary, T Purushothaman.