A little over 78% of the candidates who appeared for the Common Entrance Test (CET) have qualified to apply for professional engineering courses.
The results of CET, which was conducted on April 29 and 30, were announced on Saturday by the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA). Of 1.8 lakh candidates who appeared, 1.4 lakh are eligible to take part in the engineering counselling process.
Decline in numbers
On the one hand, the percentage of candidates who qualified for engineering increased this year compared to the previous year, which was 75.71% of 1.92 lakh candidates. However, in sheer numbers, fewer students qualified this year, making the race for professional seats less competitive. This holds true not just for engineering but also agriculture, pharmacy, veterinary science, and naturopathy and yogic sciences. That said, the number of students who are eligible for counselling is far more than the number of seats available.
KEA officials attributed this trend to fewer number of candidates writing CET as it is no longer mandatory for admissions into medical and dental colleges.
Since 2017, medical and dental seat aspirants are allotted seats based on the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test ranks.
Sources pointed out that this year there was a decline in both number of candidates who registered as well as candidates who appeared.
While 1.94 lakh students registered for the test this year, only 1.8 lakh students appeared.
Bengaluru students among toppers
Majority of the top 10 spots across all streams have been bagged by students from Bengaluru. Among the top 50, only 17 candidates were from other parts of the State.
Jeffin Biju, a student of Sri Chaitanya Techno PU School, Marathahalli in Bengaluru, topped the State in engineering and also secured second rank in pharmacy. The topper in naturopathy and yogic sciences, P. Mahesh Anand, is from the same college. He also topped in the veterinary stream.
Keerthana M. Arun of National Public School, Rajajinagar, secured the first rank in agriculture. Sai Saketika Chekuri from Sri Chaitanya Techno PU School, Ramamurthy Nagar, bagged the top spot in pharmacy. She also secured third rank in the engineering stream.