As the third round of Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions (TNEA 2020) counselling came to an end, almost 75% of the seats in the state’s colleges remained vacant. Only over 42,000 seats out of the 1.61 lakh engineering seats in Tamil Nadu were taken till the end of the third round of counselling. According to reports, 42,421 seats out of the total 1,61,877 engineering programme seats have been filled till the end of the third round.
The vacancy in the government quota seats alone is around 60% this year. Moreover, around 40% of those who had registered to participate in the TNEA 2020 counselling did not turn up. If the same level of participation continues over to the fourth round, the total number of seats taken by students this year would be around 41%. Though the number of applicants for TNEA 2020 saw an upward jump of around 20% this year in comparison with last year, the number of admissions have decreased.
The TNEA 2020 conducted by the state’s Directorate of Technical Education (DOTE) began on October 8 and will go on till October 28. A total of 35,122 students were eligible to participate in the third round of counselling and 40,472 students were called to participate in the fourth round of counselling. The applicants will be allowed to confirm the allotment of seats in the fourth round on October 26 and 27 and the provisional allotment list for the fourth round will be published by the DOTE on October 28.
In 2019-20, over 2.26 lakh seats were up for grabs across the 436 engineering colleges across Tamil Nadu. Of this, over 1.08 lakh seats were filled. In Tamil Nadu, engineering aspirants do not have to write an entrance test to be eligible for admissions. A rank list is prepared based on the marks scored by the candidates in Maths, Physics and Chemistry in their Class 12 board exams and seats allotted through single-window counselling process.