Chennai: The number of seats available for online general counselling has increased by 26,580 (15%) compared to last year. As many as 1,98,825 seats are available in 418 engineering colleges for the general counselling this year.About 2.3 lakh students will compete for these seats in three rounds, which will begin on Monday. Experts predict the admission trend will be similar to last year and ask engineering aspirants to give more choices due to the expected fall in cut-off marks this year. As many as 37,976 students got cut off from 200 to 171.3 will take part in the first round.“The number of students scoring 200 out of 200 cut-off has come down from 143 last year to 53 this year. So, we can expect a drop in cut-off marks. Engineering aspirants can opt for colleges which had higher cut-offs last year,” said T Purushothaman, secretary, Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions (TNEA).Experts predicted a drop in cut-off of up to four marks in the 190 and above for top colleges.TNEA, on its official website, has enabled the comparison of the previous five years’ cut-off marks and ranks at all colleges. “This will give an idea to students before making their choice. They can also check how many seats were filled in a particular course last year,” he added. He also asked all students to confirm their tentative allotment to get a seat allotment in the online engineering counselling.Career consultants expect more than 80% of seats to be filled in counselling this year as well. “We can also expect a shift towards core branches in counselling. Students have to fill as many choices as possible and give importance to colleges rather than the courses,” career consultant Jayaprakash Gandhi said.Going by management admissions, colleges expect better admissions to core courses such as electrical and electronics engineering (EEE) this year.“Computer science engineering, ECE, were the most preferred courses. We expect more students to join EEE and mechanical engineering courses in the counselling. Many students also enquired about courses such as machine learning in the management quota admissions,” said D Valavan, principal of Trichy’s Saranathan Engineering College.Three rounds of engineering counselling will conclude on Aug 31. In counselling for special category students, 258 students with disabilities received allotments, while 139 wards of ex-servicemen also got seats. Meanwhile, 416 students received seat allotments under the sports quota.
