One lakh engineering seats still vacant

According to career counsellor Jayaprakash Gandhi, of the 527 engineering colleges in the state, 63 institutions have performed well by filling all their seats in OC, BC, BCM, and MBC (except SC and SCA) categories so far. 

“Among these top 63 colleges, 16 have filled all seats in all categories. Over 200 engineering colleges still have seats available in OC category in all branches of study they offer. This shows that students prefer to join colleges which offer good quality education and have better placement chances,” he said. At the end of the last session of counselling on July 18, of the 1,85,670 seats available for government’s single window counselling (Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions 2016), 70,843 students had accepted allotment and 1,14,827 seats remained vacant. 

As many as 15,378 students opted for mechanical engineering, followed by electronics and communication engineering (13,802) and computer science engineering (12,003). Of the 660 seats in civil engineering (Tamil medium), 136 candidates had preferred the course and of the 718 seats in mechanical engineering (Tamil medium) 137 got filled up. Mechanical engineering (15,136 boys) turned out to be most sought after course among boys, whereas electronics and communication engineering had more girl takers (8,909 girls). It also emerged that 34,224 students belonged to the first generation graduate category. 

TNEA had called 1,07,553 candidates for counselling till July 18 and 36,340 (33.79 per cent) did not attend the counselling, 370 skipped by attending and not taking a seat during the counselling. This year’s government’s single window counselling (academic stream) started on June 27 with 42.68 per cent students (1,231) not attending the counselling on the first day.