Over 50K Engineering seats may remain vacant this year in Tamil Nadu

This year, a total of 476 colleges, including Anna University have as many as 1,51,870 seats against the total student enrollment of 1,38,531. Additional Director of Higher Education Department and TN Engineering Admissions (TNEA-2021) in-charge Dr T Purushothaman told DT Next on Sunday that a total of 89,187 students have got provisional allotment at the end of the fourth and final round of counselling.

Going by TNEA’s provisional allocations, at present 62,683 engineering seats will be vacant. However, the Directorate of Technical Education (DOTE) sources said supplementary counselling will be held from October 19 for those who missed the earlier sessions or could not get their choice of courses.

Accordingly, the DOTE is expecting that between 5,000 and 6,000 students might get provisional allocations during the supplement counselling. Even if 6,000 get an allocation, about 55,000 seats will lie vacant this academic year. Last year, the number of seats vacant was around 83,000.

Purushothaman said during the first round of counselling a total of 11,185 candidates were given provisional allotment. “Likewise, during the second round it was 20,363 and in the third round as many as 23,327 students got allocation,” he said adding “similarly, during the fourth round a total of 26,515 got the seats”.

The official also said that a total of 7,324 students who studied in government schools and availed 7.5 per cent horizontal quota have got provisional seat allocations. “In addition, seats were also given to 473 students from special reservations this year,” he added.

Meanwhile, Anna University and a few of its affiliated engineering colleges across the State have got 100 per cent admissions this year. DOTE statistics said about 40 per cent of colleges were able to fill about 90 per cent of seats and 10 per cent of colleges 10 per cent of seats.

As per the provisional allotments, most of the colleges were able to fill Computer and other IT related courses as it was the most preferred choice. The DOTE also asked the students who got the provisional allotment to communicate to their respective colleges with regard to their admissions.