Engineering counselling will be close race' this year

Updated on: Thursday, May 19, 2011

This year's engineering admission counselling in Tamil Nadu is going to be a “close race” because of the same cut-off marks scored by unusually more number of students in Plus-Two examinations.

There are hundreds of students having the same cut-off mark and they have been asked to have a minimum of four engineering colleges as choice when they go to attend the Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions 2011 counselling, “since the race is close.”

Addressing a huge gathering of students/parents at ‘The Hindu Education Plus Career Fair 2011' here on Wednesday, Jayaprakash A. Gandhi, career consultant and analyst, said that the close race in engineering counselling would be due to the overall high marks and good performance by students in the recent Plus-Two results compared to last year.

“With 200 marks cut-off, there are 120 students now (last year 31 students) and with 195 marks cut-off in engineering, there are 414 students. The increased number of centum and taking in to account the overall Plus-Two marks position in the State, the situation will be such that students would be choosing the same college,” Mr. Jayaprakash Gandhi said in his analysis.

He said in his detailed presentation that the performance of students in mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology was phenomenal this year and this makes the counselling a tough exercise for students.

“If a student's cut-off mark is 199 this year, the rank will be 1,174. Last year the rank was 609 for the same cut-off mark. With 198.25 cut-off mark, there are 398 students this year. Totally 13,383 students have scored 195 marks and above in the Plus-Two examinations,” Mr. Gandhi said. Cautioning that even the students who scored high marks in Plus-Two will face a tough time in getting a college of their choice, he suggested that they must shortlist at least four colleges by the time they go inside the hall for counselling.

In the Plus-Two examination results declared on May 8, there were 2,697 students who secured 200 out of 200 marks in maths while it was 1,756 students last year. Those who scored 199 marks in maths were 2,432 this year as against 1,639 last year.

“In mathematics, if a student loses even one mark, his cut-off comes down drastically. This has to be borne in mind by all Plus-Two students in future,” he said.

Mr. Gandhi said that Tamil Nadu would have an additional 19,500 seats available in the engineering counselling and the total number of engineering seats will be 1.4 lakh this year. Last year, there were 1.2 lakh engineering seats of which 8,172 seats remained vacant. This year, the students will have option to choose from more than 500 engineering colleges in the Tamil Nadu admission counselling.

Mr. Jayaprakash Gandhi also answered students' specific queries on colleges and courses. A set of experts including S. Selvam, Director, Centre for University-Industry Collaboration, Anna University-Chennai and R. Balakrishnan, senior IAS officer, were among those who spoke at “The Hindu Education Plus Career Fair” here.

Engineering counselling will be close race' this year

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