Chennai, July 20:
The online general counselling process for engineering admissions in Tamil Nadu commenced today, marking a crucial phase for lakhs of aspiring students across the state.
For the current academic year, a total of 2.45 lakh students applied for engineering seats under the government quota. After certificate verification, 2.36 lakh candidates were declared eligible to participate in the counselling process. The rank list for admissions was released earlier on July 1.
Prior to the general counselling, special category counselling under the 7.5 percent internal reservation for government school students was conducted on July 13 and 14 for categories including persons with disabilities, sportspersons, and children of ex-servicemen. Through this process, 137 candidates were allotted seats. Subsequently, general counselling for special category students was held from July 15 to July 18.
As scheduled, the general counselling has now begun on July 20 and will continue until August 30 in three rounds. The first round allows eligible students to choose their preferred colleges and courses from 10:00 AM today until 5:00 PM on July 22.
The provisional allotment list for the first round will be released on July 24 at 10:00 AM. Candidates must confirm their choices by 5:00 PM on July 25, following which the final allotment orders will be issued online on July 26.
In the first round, candidates with cut-off marks ranging from 200 to 171.333 and ranks between 1 and 37,976 are eligible to participate. Both general category students and those under the 7.5 percent reservation for government school students can take part. Vocational stream students are also included in this round.
This year, counselling is being conducted for admissions across 418 engineering colleges, offering a total of 1,98,825 seats. The distribution of seats under special categories includes 258 for persons with disabilities, 416 for sportspersons, and 139 for children of ex-servicemen.
With a significant number of applicants and available seats, the counselling process is expected to play a key role in determining engineering admissions across Tamil Nadu this year.