The Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions (TNEA) 2020 rank list will be issued on September 17, said Higher Education Minister KP Anbalagan on Wednesday. He made the announcement while releasing the random numbers which will be used as a last resort tie-breaker.

In case two students have the same rank, then the student with the higher score in mathematics will be ranked higher. A second level tiebreaker would be the physics scores and the third level will be the fourth subject (biology, computer science, etc.). If the candidates are still tied over scores, then the older student will get preference. If students are still tied beyond all these, the student with the higher random number will be given preference.

This year 1,60,834 candidates registered and 1,31,436 have paid fees for counselling. Officials said that 1,14,206 candidates have also uploaded their documents. Certificate verification for general category students will start by September 10, the minister said. Sports quota certificate verification will happen from Wednesday until September 10 in six zones, including Madurai, Trichy, Tirunelveli, Chennai, Salem and Coimbatore. While the rank list was supposed to be issued on September 7, it has been postponed as the revaluation results of the Class 12 state board exams will be published only September 8.

He further added that while 480 colleges had signed up for the counselling last year, it has dipped to only 458 colleges and the total number of seats available is 1,61,877. Anbalagan said that the engineering fees shall not be increased this academic year.