21, Jul 2011

Three days after the last date for submission of application forms for Anna University counselling, the admission counter was still abuzz with parents and students on Tuesday.

M. Ramachandran, from Thiruvallur, was busy writing the apology letter for delay in submitting the form while a hassled mother was waiting to rectify a mistake, “My daughter sent her medical college form here in place of the engineering one. After this, I have to go to the medical college too,” says the mother.

They are not alone. “We have students who have sent us their original mark sheets, or the photocopies of the data sheets. We are in the process of informing them,” says V. Rhymend Uthariaraj, secretary, Tamil Nadu Engineering Admission.

The processing of application forms, announcing rank lists, counselling — all these are on the cards, as all colleges gear up for the admission process. To help students gain an idea of the cut-offs, those from last year have been uploaded, and the scanned data sheets will be put up soon, says Mr. Uthariaraj.

The university has received close to 1,48,500 forms for various courses in 488 colleges across the state. The rank list is expected by the last week of this month.

While many aspirants are waiting for the Anna University rank lists to come out, others have joined through the management quota of private colleges. The capitation fee in many engineering colleges for Mechanical Engineering has gone up to Rs 4 to 6 lakh a year, while for ECE it is close to Rs 2 to 3 lakh, say sources.

The delay between the last date of filling the application form and releasing the rank list is prompting many parents to choose management seats,” says N. Madhivannan, a parent.

Mechanical engineering seems to be the most popular choice, followed by electronics and communication, and computer science engineering.

VIT University, that saw its counselling close on Monday, had takers for all its 3,500 seats, Chancellor G. Viswanathan says. Newly introduced engineering courses in Nuclear Science and Architectural Engineering at SRM University are finding many takers, said R. Muthusubramanian, director (Admissions).

While the cut-offs have increased by 5 per cent compared to last year, as many as 60 per cent of the candidates who have cleared the test are from State board schools,” he adds. The university will begin its counselling procedure on the June 12.

With the infrastructure boom, the demand for core engineering courses is bound to rise as would the demand for bio technology courses, says S. Vaidhyasubramiam, Dean (Planning & Development), Sastra University.

As for the IITs, with the counselling going completely online this year, students need not travel. Of the 3,100 students who had qualified in the JEE in the Madras zone, 2,500 have already sent the forms,” said V. Kamakoti, chairman, JEE 2001, IIT-Madras zone.