After supplementary counselling, 83k engg seats lie vacant in State

Chennai

Of the total 461 engineering colleges, including Anna University, which participated in the counselling conducted by the Directorate of Technical Education (DoTE), only 71,195 seats could be filled this time as against last year’s figure of 83,396. Anna University and its four constituent colleges were able to get 100 per cent admissions this year. However, less than five private engineering institutions were able to fill all their seats. After about 90,000 engineering seats lying vacant after general admissions process got over last month, the DoTE had arranged supplementary counselling for the students who missed the earlier sessions or could not get their choice of courses during the earlier rounds.

A senior official from DoTE said about 7,000 students got engineering admissions through online supplementary counselling. After this, the number of vacancies this year stands at about 83,000.

“This year, provisional allotment letters were sent to about 79,000 students. Of this, at least 75,000 students are expected to join the colleges while the rest might opt for other courses through competitive exams,” said the official. He added that final admissions data would be available only after all the students give their consent online. The DoTE official noted that the most preferred course this year was Computer Science with specialisation in Artificial Intelligence. “Information Technology (IT) course is also a favourite among the students this academic year,” he added. Due to COVID-19 pandemic, the Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions 2020 (TNEA 2020) was a completely online process, including registration, payments, choice filling, allotment and confirmation.