As many as 55,378 seats have been filled at the end of the third round of counselling by the Tamil Nadu Engineering Admission Committee 2021.
Of the 40,891 eligible candidates, 29,877 have filled choices and 23,716 candidates have been given provisional allotment.
A total of 1,51,870 seats are available under single window counselling, and 1,39,033 candidates are eligible to participate.
Quite a few candidates with high scores have participated in the subsequent rounds. In some instances, candidates with high scores have skipped higher rung colleges though they could have been easily allotted seats in these institutions.
Senior faculty in government engineering colleges said the practice of blocking seats was checked by a former commissioner of Directorate of Technical Education who collected the data of medical counselling and denied seats to students who had applied for engineering.
The faculty said some colleges would encourage students to take a seat under counselling knowing well that the candidate had no intention of getting admitted. “When the seat lapses, the self-financing college would fill it up through management quota,” the faculty said.
Another issue could be that the candidates had not filled sufficient number of choices and hence had to participate in the next round as well. The parent of a candidate who participated in the first round said his son had chosen a branch of study and did not want to opt for other branches. “We should have filled more choices to ensure that he got a seat in the best college,” the parent rued. Lucikly for him during the provisional filling the candidate opted for upgrade and he got a seat in a branch of study closer to his original choice of biotechnology, the parent said.
While candidates have patronised government engineering colleges in Bargur, Tiruchi, Erode and Dharmapuri, those in Tirukuvalai, Ramanathapuram, Panruti and Villupuram, have not found favour.
College professors said the government had not made efforts to upgrade infrastructure or facilities in these institutions. Some of the colleges were in interior locations with poor access as well.
On Wednesday, the TNEA began the fourth round of counselling in which over 41,000 candidates were participating.
