| Friday, Aug 12, 2005
Students go by colleges rather than courses as engineering counselling continues
Chennai: In the first 11 days of counselling for engineering admissions, only 36.90 per cent of the 42,000-plus seats on offer through Anna University's Single Window System have been taken.
As of August 11, for which a detailed analysis was made, no seats had been taken in at least 70 private self-financing colleges.
One thing is obvious: students and their parents are focussing on colleges rather than plumping for preferred courses.
Though the "circuit branches" such as Computer Science, Electrical and Electronics, and Information Technology are most sought after, interestingly, 4,092 seats in Computer Science, 4,958 in EEE and 2,968 in IT are available. It is clear that students have shunned them because they are being offered in colleges not on their list(see chart).
As many as 38 colleges and seven deemed universities have accreditation for some courses and are allowed to charge higher fees for them. The preferred colleges in the Single Window System seem to belong to this category. For many institutions, the preference vote of the students is the "real accreditation."
Analyst and career guidance counsellor Jayaprakash Gandhi says after the first week of counselling, students did not choose any traditional branches such as mechanical or civil engineering. But in the first three days of this week, seats in these courses appear to be moving faster. For instance, compared to 40 seats in civil engineering allotted in the first week, 70 seats were taken in each of the last three days. Mechanical and chemical engineering seats seem to be "moving faster now", at least in the more popular colleges. The clear preference for colleges manifests itself in the fact that Computer Science is still available in almost 175 colleges — in some category or the other. EEE or IT is still on offer in over 100 colleges.
Compare this with the fact that not just these, but even seats in the traditional courses are not available in the popular colleges. All that remains to be filled are seats reserved for the SC/ST, with a few also having some seats meant for the Most Backward Classes. On an average, 1,400 seats get allotted in the four counselling centres. Mr. Gandhi says 400 of them were for ECE and 300 for computer science in the first 10 days. Till Wednesday, 19,600 students have been called for counselling and 14,103 admitted. Nearly 5,200 students either opted out or failed to show up.
Another feature is the "surrender" of more seats by the private colleges. When counselling started, there were 41,598 seats. This rose to 42,180 on August 11. So far 15,565 seats have been allotted.
Courtesy: The Hindu
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