| Saturday, August 04, 2007
ECE, IT, Computer Science courses rule the roost
Civil and Mechanical Engineering courses also sought after by engineering aspirants
- 85,000 candidates competing for 62,500 seats
- 14 new institutions have been added to list
Chennai: He travelled all the way to Chennai from Dindigul and
waited patiently for the last two days, but lathe factory owner
S. Viswanathan is determined not to go back home without a prized
Information Technology seat for his son, whose cut-off marks
would probably get him only one of the less preferred branches.
“Only an IT or computer science seat will get my son a
coveted job. It doesn’t really matter what the college
is.”
His case, perhaps, exemplifies the trend in this year’s
engineering counselling, which began on July 23. Around 85,000
candidates are competing for some 62,500 seats.
The number of seats is likely to go up as self-financing colleges
surrender more seats to the single window pool and more colleges
are granted recognition by the AICTE and Anna University. Fourteen
new institutions have been added.
With 11 days having gone by, Electronics and Communication Engineering,
IT and Computer Science courses are the clear winners, though
Civil and Mechanical engineering have done fairly well too.
Intense competition
“The competition has been so intense that even with a
cut-off of 189/200 (94.5 per cent), students belonging to OC
and BC categories have been unable to get seats in circuit branches
in top five government and government-aided colleges, such as
the College of Engineering, Guindy; Madras Institute of Technology,
Chromepet; PSG College of Technology and Government College
of Technology, both in Coimbatore, and Thyagarajar College of
Engineering, Madurai.
“The Government College of Engineering, Bargur, and Thanthai
Periyar Government Institute of Technology, Vellore, were the
least preferred,” points out analyst Jayaprakash Gandhi.
Among self-financing colleges, Tier-I institutions have not
been languishing for takers, even in less preferred branches.
The SSN College of Engineering, Chennai; Kumaraguru College
of Technology, Coimbatore; Sri Venkateswara College of Engineering,
Sriperumbudur; Kongu Engineering College, Perundurai, and St.
Joseph Engineering College and Velammal College of Engineering
both in Chennai, are clear favourites.
Even a crackdown by the Directorate of Technical Education officials
on the Sriperumbudur college and St. Joseph’s College,
based on complaints of capitation fee collection, and a warning
by the Higher Education Minister that DOTE would write to the
AICTE seeking cancellation of recognition to these institutions
from next year, has not applied the brakes.
Slack admissions
Courses such as Material Science, Geoinformatics, Electrochemical
Engineering, Pharmaceutical Engineering, Petroleum Refining
Engineering, Biotechnology, Biomedical engineering, Aeronautical
Engineering and Instrumentation and Control Engineering have
had slack admissions, even in prestigious Anna University colleges
such as CEG and A.C. College of Technology.
The prestigious Central Electro Chemical Engineering Research
Institute, Karaikkudi, did not find many takers either for B.
Tech in Electrochemical Engineering.
Students’ choice
When it came to a choice between colleges and courses, students
have clearly voted in favour of colleges. All the seats under
the OC, BC and MBC categories in top government and government-aided
colleges and self-financing institutions were filled in the
first few days of counselling itself.
Courtesy: The Hindu
|
