CHENNAI: Subash Nehru of Sathuvachari, Vellore, is the first ranker in the Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions (TNEA), with a score of 298.25 out of 300.

The rank list, released by Anna University Vice Chancellor D. Viswanathan on Saturday, showed a rise in the number of students scoring more than 280 compared to last year.

However, the number of those who scored between 200 and 280 has come down.

In other words, the overall performance of students this year was not as good as last year. There is a reduction of four to eight marks, which the Vice-Chancellor attributed to the change in the Plus Two syllabus. The second ranker is P.Kirubakaran of Kalpakkam DAE township (298.17) and the third ranker T.M.Vijayvaradharaj of Pazhavanthangal, Chennai (298.08).

Top rankers seem to be more interested in engineering courses than medicine.

Addressing presspersons, the Vice-Chancellor said a total of 67,108 students (40,626 boys and 26,482 girls) were eligible for engineering admissions, including 64,302 from the academic stream, 1,523 from other States and 1,283 candidates from the vocational stream.

Seat matrix

The final seat matrix would emerge only after the Madras High Court passes orders on a petition on seat sharing between the college managements and the government.

However, counselling would begin the day after the MBBS/BDS counselling concluded and would go on for about four weeks, he said.

An analysis of the rank list shows that the number of students who got over 280 marks this year is 845 compared to 805 last year.

Cut-off marks

This means there may not be much change in the marks needed to get into the College of Engineering -Guindy or PSG Tech for `circuit branches.' But the score levels may come down by three marks for core branches such as Mechanical Engineering in top colleges, says career consultant Jayaprakash Gandhi.

"Getting 270 this year will be the same as 273 last year. And down the list, a student who has secured 260 (rank No.4500 plus) will get the same college or branch as those who secured 266 last year, " he adds.

Overall, the scores needed to enter top self-financing colleges may have come down by five-six marks for popular branches and about seven marks for the core branches.

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