At least three of the students in top 10 ranks in engineering are first-generation learners.
The three received their allotment letters from Higher Education Minister P. Palaniappan at the launch of general counselling on Wednesday.
Giritharan C., Mohanprasath N., and Vignesh V.B., who secured 200 as cut-off, have all opted for Mechanical Engineering at the College of Engineering, Guindy (CEG).
All the three have a humble background. Mohanprasath’s father is a coconut farmer in Tirupur while Giritharan’s father works in the Civil Supplies Department.
Vignesh’s father, Velayutham, was a hotel worker who died of heart attack in Tiruttani in January. Vignesh studied in a government school till Class X.
“I scored 485 and was admitted for free education in Adarsh Vidyalaya for Plus-One,” Vignesh said. He had aimed for medicine but his cut-off was 195.5 (he scored 191 in biology), though he had centum in mathematics, physics and chemistry, he said.
Of the 232 candidates called for the first session, only 101 seats were allotted. Among them was Arun Kumar Palanichamy of Kunrathur who had rejected a seat in a self-financing medical college to join in Electronics and Communication Engineering at CEG.
Only one new college, the Indian Institute of Handloom Technology in Salem, with 30 seats to the government pool, has been included in the single window counselling this year.
Fewer seats
Compared to last year, Anna University has 11,356 fewer seats this year. Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions (TNEA) secretary Rhymend V. Uthariaraj said that 2,00,430 seats, including the 23,000 seats surrendered by managements of self-financing institutions, were available under single-window counselling. Last year, 2,11,786 seats were available.
“As per government norms only 1.78 lakh seats are to be surrendered by the self-financing and aided colleges. Minority institutions must surrender 50 per cent seats and non-minority colleges must surrender 60 per cent seats only. But managements have been surrendering more seats for some years now,” Mr. Rhymend said.
In the first two days of counselling, the number of absentees would be higher but it would fall to 10 to 15 per cent as counselling progresses. By the end of the month, as much as 40 per cent of absenteeism would be recorded. “On an average, we are expecting around 30 per cent absentees during the counselling process,” Mr. Rhymend said.
