While engineering aspirants in Tamil Nadu eagerly await admissions into colleges, on August 26 at 4.00 pm, Higher Education Minister KP Anbalagan will release random numbers for allocating merit-based ranking. Random numbers help break the tie between students who have the same marks.
As of August 24, the last date, Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions (TNEA) received completed applications from 1.14 lakh candidates.
According to the tentative plan, the rank list for the candidates would be released on September 7 and online counselling for general quota will be held between September 17 and October 6.
Over 1.6 lakh candidates registered for counselling of which 1.31 paid counselling fee. Only 1.14 lakh students submitted documents, making them eligible for the random number allocation process.
While the number of registrations was up by 20% from last year, there was a drop in the number of candidates who were able to upload their certificates. This is being attributed to the fact that many students were not able to obtain their updated mark sheets following re-evaluation. TNEA, however, had clarified last week that candidates can upload provisional mark sheets since revised information would be imported directly from the Directorate of Government Exams.
In the 2019 academic year, from a total of 2.8 lakh seats available in engineering colleges, only 1.5 lakh seats were filled. This year, the number is expected to drop further.
The minister had stated that 52 help centres will be set-up across Tamil Nadu to support candidates filing for admissions. According to him, about 465 engineering colleges had registered for online counselling.
Notably, several private engineering institutions had cancelled their entrance examinations for undergraduate courses due to COVID-19 pandemic and instead announced that admissions would be based on marks scored by candidates in their public examinations.
Meanwhile, the Union Education Minister has come under flack for announcing that it will be going ahead with entrance tests such as JEE (for engineering) and NEET (for medical courses).