Chennai: As many as 43,132 (46%) of 93,116 students invited to take part in the second round of general counselling skipped the counselling this year. Experts attributed the high absence rate to students joining preferred courses under management quota and deemed universities completing their admissions before the engineering counselling.After the first two rounds of counselling, the number of seats filled has come down by 5,236 compared to last year. “Students who did not get their preferred courses or colleges, did not accept the allotment. More students preferred urban campuses,” career consultant Jayaprakash Gandhi said.The lower participation also impacted the number of seats filled in the counselling so far this year. “As many as 23 colleges could not attract a single student while 167 colleges filled less than 10% seats after the two rounds. The number of colleges filling more than 50% of their intake also came down to 111 from 147 last year,” he added.However, officials from Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions (TNEA) said the number of provisional allotments including 7.5% special reservation and general counselling was 59,951.“The admission trend is similar to last year. We expect to fill 1.3 lakh seats after the third round,” said T Purushothaman, secretary of TNEA.Colleges expect more admissions in the third round this year due to a drop in Class XII marks. The cut-off marks dropped by up to 10, to around 150 this year.“Colleges have filled less seats compared to last year. However, we expect more admissions in the third round, in which more than one lakh students will take part,” said D Valavan, principal of Trichy’s Saranathan Engineering College.While courses such as computer science engineering, electronics and communication engineering, and AI and data science remained top choices among the students, colleges said they witnessed a spike in admissions in courses such as electrical and electronics engineering and mechanical engineering this year.Experts also pointed out that students did not join specialised courses such as environmental engineering, marine engineering, textile chemistry, data visualisation and data science this year.
