Over 50k engineering seats in Tamil Nadu colleges to go vacant

CHENNAI: With counselling for the students seeking engineering seats over, more than 50,000 seats are expected to remain vacant this year. At the same time, the number of engineering admissions have also increased this year compared to previous years.

The Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions (TNEA-2023) started on May 5 with 1.76 lakh candidates eligible to participate in the counselling based on their cut-off marks.

Accordingly, the first round of engineering counselling for students from the general category started from July 28 with 22,761 eligible to participate.

Similarly, the second and third round of counselling saw 1.54 lakh candidates registered to participate.

A senior official from the Directorate of Technical Education (DOTE) told DT Next that of the total of 1.76 lakh candidates were there in the rank list, engineering seats were allotted provisionally to 1.06 lakh students after the completion of three rounds of counselling.

Stating that this year the engineering admissions were increased, he pointed out that last year, the number of students who got the engineering seats was about 92,000.

With 1.56 lakh engineering seats available in 442 colleges across the State, he said this year over 50,000 seats will be vacant.

"However, since supplementary counselling will be held, maximum number of vacant seats will be filled additionally," he said adding that the supplementary counselling will be held from August 28 to September 3, where missed out students could participate.

The DOTE official said the engineering colleges will start functioning full-fledged from the third week of September. "Intimation with regard to the opening of colleges will be sent to all the students," he added.