Counselling fixed for engg seats before med

Counselling fixed for engg seats before med

AICTE Schedule May Leave Engg Seats Vacant

Ragu.Raman@timesgroup.com

Chennai:14.07.2021

A day after announcing the exam date for National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) 2021, the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) issued a revised academic calendar for 2021-22 for engineering colleges on Tuesday. As per the schedule released by AICTE’s member secretary professor Rajive Kumar, the first round engineering counselling for BE, BTech programmes must be completed before September 30.

The second round of engineering counselling needs to be completed before October 10. First-year students can be admitted till October 20 and the last date to start classes for firstyear students is October 25.

According to experts, with the NEET exam scheduled on September12, conducting medical counselling before engineering counselling is not possible this year too. It would leave several hundred engineering seats in top engineering colleges in Tamil Nadu vacant as students who are unsure of getting medical seats will join top engineering colleges and discontinue it after getting medical admissions. Last year as many as 276 students discontinued BE, BTech courses in Anna University’s four campuses including College of Engineering, Guindy (CEG) and Madras Institute of Technology (MIT) to study medicine and other courses.

Internal choices in NEET paper for 2021

The National Testing Agency (NTA) has introduced internal choices in the NEET 2021 question paper after multiple eductaion boards have announced syllabus reduction for Class XII students. As per the change in the question paper pattern, physics, chemistry sections will have five additional questions and biology (botany and zoology) section will have 10 additional questions. NTA has also split each subject into two sections — section A and section B. Students have to answer all the 35 questions in section A and 10 out of 15 questions in section B. As per the new pattern students can answer 180 questions out of 200 questions in NEET exam. Each correct answer will carry 4 marks and for every wrong answer one mark will be deducted. P 10

‘Medical counselling before engg only way to stop wastage of seats’

Anna University former vice-chancellor M K Surappa said the only solution to prevent wastage of seats is to conduct medical counselling before engineering counselling.

“AICTE should consult with the National Testing Agency (NTA) and come out with proper scheduling to prevent engineering seats from falling vacant. Despite bringing it to the notice of AICTE, no remedial action has been taken this year,” he said.

Many private engineering colleges also have from 50 to 100 seats vacant if the medical counselling is conducted before engineering counselling.

“If engineering counselling is conducted first, students select the engineering seats for safety and leave their seats after getting medical admissions. Around 100 students discontinue their courses in top colleges every year,” said RM Kishore, vicechairman of RMK Engineering College.

Unlike Anna University, private engineering colleges can fill up these seats at a later stage.

However, principals said they cannot fill all vacant seats after admissions to engineering courses are over. “Scheduling is the main issue. The present schedule is forcing the students to make one choice even though they are not willing,” a principal from city college said.

Meanwhile, deemed universities facing a different challenge as the admissions to IITs, NITs are being conducted in several rounds and students are leaving these institutions after taking admissions to join centrally funded institutions.

“The ministry of education and AICTE either reduce the counselling to IITs and centrally funded institutions to four rounds or need to allow all AICTE approved institutions to admit 10% more than the sanctioned intake. It will reduce the damage caused by Jo-SAA (Joint Seat Allocation Authority) counselling delays and longer schedules. It is also a good idea to cancel JEE (Advanced) as it proves a non-existent differentia,” said S Vaidhyasubramaniam, vice-chancellor of SASTRA.