Nearly 69% of the seats allotted in the first round of counselling for engineering admission has been in branches related to computer science and information technology or circuitry. Also, nearly 5% of the seats within the segment has gone to new branches of study — artificial intelligence and data science and computer science and business system.
These niche disciplines are offered only by a handful of colleges, but students have shown preference for them over traditional branches.
The Tamil Nadu Engineering Admission 2021 committee had invited 14,842 candidates for the first round of counselling, of whom 11,224 candidates, including 1,037 from the vocational stream and 10,187 from the academic stream, were allotted seats.
Seat allotment in the just-concluded first round of counselling has not come as a surprise, though. Nearly 94% of the intake in the four campuses of Anna University has been filled. That some students may have chosen the top-ranking colleges as a backup till seats are allotted in national institutes like the IITs and the NITs and NEET results are released is another matter.
All seats in five disciplines — ECE, EEE, CSE, IT and Aeronautical Engineering — on all the four campuses of Anna University have been filled.
Only a handful of seats in a few disciplines like ceramic, leather and textile are available for the second round.
Of the 11,224 seats that were allotted, as many as 3,058 seats went to CSE aspirants. Core engineering programmes, like civil and mechanical have not enthused candidates.
Only a handful of self-financing colleges have managed to fill at least 50% of their intake. Among the self-financing colleges, only Sri Sivasubramaniya Nadar College of Engineering (Autonomous) has managed to fill 91% of its intake.
A total of 11 institutions, including the departments of Anna University, besides Coimbatore Institute of Technology, PSG Institute of Technology, PSG College of Technology, Government College of Technology, Thiagarajar College of Engineering and Chennai Institute of Technology, have managed to fill 60% of their intake.
Of the 440 institutions that are participating in the counselling, as many as 223 have not filled even one seat. “The seat allocation is an indication that top-scorers (cut-off 200 to 185) prefer colleges with an established trend of focusing on improving infrastructure and upgrading facilities,” independent consultant Jayaprakash Gandhi said.