Only 38% TN students who availed 7.5% quota get engg seats of choice

The much-hyped 7.5% horizontal quota for government school students in engineering admissions across Tamil Nadu doesn’t seem to have been of much benefit as only 38% of the total applicants could get seats of their choice.

A senior official from the Directorate of Technical Education (DOTE) said 15,161 students from government schools enrolled in the academic engineering category. Also, 499 students registered for vocational courses. “Of the 15,660 applications, provisional allocation was made to only 5,972 students, which is about 38%,” he added.

Explaining why very few government school students could get provisional allotment, Additional Director of Higher Education Department and Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions (TNEA-2021) in-charge Dr T Purushothaman told DT Next that seats could not be allocated to most government students since seats for their choice of courses already got filled. “However, they still have a chance to apply for other courses,” he said and pointed out that this academic year, number of engineering seats was more than students’ enrolment. According to him, this year, 476 colleges, including Anna University, have 1,51,870 seats against the total student enrolment of 1,38,531.

Another official from the Higher

Education Department, seeking anonymity, said several students from State-run institutions who applied for engineering courses could not produce certificates to prove that they studied in government schools. “Therefore, their applications were rejected”, he added. The official also hinted that many such students opted for Computer Science and Information Technology more than the available quota. “Provisional allocation of colleges and choice of courses have been made according to the rank list,” he said.