As many as 300 seats will remain vacant across Anna University’s undergraduate programmes this academic year. The phenomenon of seats going vacant has become the norm over several years due to delay in the conduct of medical admissions.
This year, the online single window counselling for engineering seats overlapped that for medical seats. The first phase of counselling for engineering began on July 3 and candidates had four days’ time to lock in their choices. Counselling for medicine began on July 8. This allowed candidates to withdraw from engineering counselling if they were allotted a seat in a medical college.
“It appears that students with good scores in NEET managed to get into medical colleges but did not release the seats they had registered for at Anna University. They had paid registration fees so we could not cancel their seats,” an official explained.
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Anna University Vice- Chancellor M.K. Surappa said, “Many meritorious students have gone to deemed universities. Admission to Anna University is largely from Tamil Nadu. The mother of one student who left MIT for another college told me the college had students from different backgrounds.”
He said it would have helped if the medical admissions had taken place before engineering admissions. Since the apex court had fixed the deadline of Auguat 15 for completing the admission process, the option of a third round of counselling was also ruled out, he added.
As for vacancies in postgraduate courses, the V-C pointed out, “Nearly 60% of our seats in ME and M.Tech have been filled in our four constituent colleges. In government-aided colleges, it is about 58%. The number is not bad. Even in IISc, out of 30 only 20 students will join.”
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A high rate of unemployment in the last one year and a greater number of seats compared to demand are some of the reasons for poor admission, he said.