Pointers to engineering counselling

With the date of counselling for engineering students in the general category drawing near, the decision regarding the right course and college seems to elude them.

This year there are 1.25 lakh students (as against the 1.23 lakh last year) competing for the 86,000-odd seats (as against 69,731 seats last year) in government colleges and government quota of self-financing colleges. This year there is an additional 25,000 seats to be made available if the 140 colleges that have applied for approval to the All Indian Council of Technical Education (AICTE) get the nod.

Though this supposedly seems like an advantage, the increase in number of colleges and the variation in the reservation sub-heads (OC - 31 per cent, BC - 26.5 per cent, BC Muslim - 3.5 per cent, MBC - 20 per cent, SC - 18 per cent, ST - 1 per cent) is expected to confuse the candidates further. Till the candidate reaches the counselling centre — Anna University, Chennai, — he/she will not get an idea of the vacancy position college and course-wise, according to the reservation categories.

However, there are websites that provide the names of possible colleges that the student can get admission in based on the cut-off, course interest and reservation category.

There is collegesintamilnadu.com which not only gives one’s aggregate marks for engineering and medicine, but also the number of students who have the same aggregate and those who have a higher one. A characteristic feature of this site is that it gives the Tamil Nadu Engineering Admission (TNEA) cut-off marks’ analysis for the last two years — 2007 and 2008 — and the rank of each engineering college in the State affiliated to the Anna University to pre-judge his/her chance of getting admission in a particular college.

By keying in the aggregate mark, course of interest and reservation category at www.collegesintamilnadu.com/counselling/tnea_cutoff_search.asp, one can get the list of colleges he/she has a chance to get admission in. Further, he/she can see his/her chances for other courses also by clicking the “view all courses” link. “While seeing the list of probable college, it is better to keep in mind the possibility that the aggregate marks obtained by students in the current year could be slightly higher than that of the previous year. It can still prove to be very useful by taking into account plus or minus five to the candidate’s aggregate. This will reduce the time and narrow down the options the candidate will have to give when he is sitting in front of the terminal at the time of counselling,” says R.V. Srivatsan, managing director, Adroit Techno Solutions, Chennai, who hosted the site seven years ago.

Other sites to look for are Kalvimalar.com, winentrance.com, admissiondates.com, collegesindia.wordpress.com, etc.

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