Mechanical Engineering has been the course of choice for students at the counselling for engineering admissions in the State with 93.57 per cent of the 16,568 available seats filled.
While 88.47 per cent of the seats in Civil Engineering and 85.21 per cent of the seats in Electronics and Communication Engineering have also been filled, only 70.72 per cent of the seats in Computer Science and Engineering and 62.97 per cent of the seats in Information Technology have been taken.
V. Rhymend Uthariaraj, secretary, Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions 2010, said the trend was similar to last year's.
However, the number of absentees this year was much less at around 27 per cent, nearly five percentage points less than last year.
The drop in absenteeism could be due to the first generation graduate tuition fee waiver scheme as 52,024 students out of the 88,666 allotted have availed of the scheme, Dr. Uthariaraj said.
Tamil medium seats in Mechanical Engineering and Civil Engineering have been taken mostly by students with Tamil medium education in school and of the 1,380 seats on offer, 1,148 have been taken until Monday. On the issue of capitation fees, P. Mannar Jawahar, Vice-Chancellor, Anna University-Chennai, who is part of the three-member committee of the Tamil Nadu Council for Technical Education, said the committee had visited two colleges against which complaints had been made and the colleges refund the amounts collected.
“Many complaints are being received over phone but when we ask them to submit written complaints, they are not coming forward,” he said. But, the committee would take strict action against erring colleges, he said.
