The counselling season has given students a fair share of options and confusion. Students from Karnataka, who want the best seat in the most sought-after college, have taken provisional allotment through COMEDK counselling. But now they wait for the Common Entrance Test (CET) real allotment status to decide where they will join, when all their options are known to them.
While the dummy allotment of seats facilitated by the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) took place on Monday, a steady stream of students attended the fourth day of counselling for engineering seats by the Consortium of Medical, Engineering and Dental Colleges of Karnataka (COMEDK).
“I have taken a provisional admission to SDM College of Engineering Technology, Hubli-Dharwad, as of now. And the dummy CET allotment has landed me a seat at KLS Vishwanathrao Deshpande Rural Institute of Technology, Haliyal,” said Naveen Patil, an aspirant from Hubli. He surely wants to wait until the real allotment before surrendering his COMEDK seat for which he has paid Rs. 50,000 as tuition fee.
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“We will lose about Rs. 5,000 if we wish to surrender the seat. But, we will have to make another trip to Bangalore to surrender the seat. We have adopted the wait-and-watch approach,” said Naveen’s father, Venkanna Gowda Patil.
For Sriraksha V. Raghavan, who has been allotted a telecommunications engineering seat in BNM Institute of Technology, Bangalore, is satisfied with the allocation but plans to make a final decision once the CET real allotment is done.
“The process is very smooth and students do not mind blocking the seat by paying Rs. 50,000 as most of the fee is refunded on surrendering,” she said.
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Ravi Kiran, though, has not had it smooth. For, according to him, if the CET process had started earlier, he would have had better chances of getting a good college, he said.
“I have got mechanical engineering at Acharya Institute of Technology, Bangalore, through COMEDK and I also have a seat at Manipal Institute of Technology which sounds like my best option right now,” he said.
His mother, Nirmala Rao, expressed anguish over the process which has not become simpler or changed since 2004, when her daughter also went through the same experience. “The routine is the same, and this year, it was worse with COMEDK counselling starting before CET,” said Ms. Rao.
The COMEDK authorities are not expecting any phenomenal increase in the number of students who will surrender their seats in view of the CET counselling.
“Around 1,000 seats will be surrendered and, in all, about 9,000 engineering seats will be filled,” said A.S. Srikanth, chief executive, COMEDK. He added that those taking up dental science courses will not be surrendering their seats as most of the students hail from Kerala where the dentistry course costs more.
Medical stream
None of the COMEDK medical stream toppers attended counselling conducted by COMEDK. Students and parents hoped to get plum seats through CET counselling and therefore, skipped the process.