Revised methodology mooted to cut down engg seat vacancies in TN

CHENNAI: In the backdrop of the ongoing admissions for engineering seats, the State government has proposed a revised methodology that would ensure seats do not remain vacant, especially in Anna University Department colleges and government institutions this year.

The Higher Education Department stated that an analysis of the last seven years’ data in engineering admissions has shown that seats remain vacant as students do not join colleges at the last minute.

A senior official from the Directorate of Technical Education (DOTE) told DT Next that to avoid vacancies, a revised methodology was proposed at the recent review meeting. “No alterations were made in the registration of applications, certificate verifications and counselling besides allocating seats based on preferential order of choices according to the rank, community and availability of seats,” he said.

Stating that during the allotment stage, if a candidate was given the seat, now, he will have six options. The first -- “Accept and Join” -- would mean that a candidate, satisfied with the seat allotted, will download the provisional allotment order and report to the college on or before the date specified in the allocation notice by paying the fees. The second-“Accept and Upward” -- states if a student, who is satisfied with the allocation but wishes to wait for allotment in the higher order will be given a tentative allotment order and should pay the fees in seven days. The third option -- “Decline and Upward” -- says if the candidate is not satisfied with the seat, but prefers to wait for the higher order of his/her choice, can be moved to the second round of counselling. In “The “Decline and move to next round” candidates, who do not want the allocated seat, will be allowed to go to the second round. “The Decline and quit” option would be that students could opt out of the admission if dissatisfied with allocation of seats. The official said the sixth option ‘Upward or move to the next round’ would be if the candidate was not allocated any seat, he/she could opt for the next round of counselling. “Till last year, vacant seats were not carried forward and it was accumulated to create supplement counselling”, he said.

Seats of candidates who do not report to the colleges will be pooled as vacant seats and considered. The residual seat matrix at the end of each round will be given as the input for the subsequent rounds, the official said. The pilot methodology will focus only on the 34 government engineering seats. By next year the focus will also shift to private engineering colleges, sources said.