At least 1,019 aspirants from the previous two rounds of Tamil Nadu Engineering Admission (TNEA) counselling were allotted seats in the concluding third round on Wednesday. Last year, the figure was only 597.

According to experts, a major reason for students eligible for first and second rounds getting seat allotment in the third round this year is faulty choice filling. "In some cases, they gave the wrong choice order for courses and colleges, while some gave very few options. Due to faulty choice filling, many meritorious students could not get seats in the institutions they deserved," said career consultant Jayaprakash Gandhi. The competition was tough this time as the number of candidates was high in each of the rounds. "We noticed that many students had not given sufficient options while filling the choices online during the counselling process. This clearly indicates that the awareness for the right way of choice-filling is lacking among engineering aspirants," added Gandhi.

"Choice filling requires expertise and it needs to be done properly. This year, many students filled the choices randomly as they had no concrete information about the cut-off of colleges. And the worst affected were the students from rural areas who were unaware about the technicalities of choice filling," said S Senthil, principal of a private engineering college.

However, TNEA in-charge T Purushothaman said they are taking adequate measures to spread awareness about the online counselling process. "We have uploaded a video on our website explaining in detail the process of choice filling. In future, however, we will take more steps to sensitise students to the online counselling process," added Purushothaman.

With the completion of the third round, almost 40 per cent of seats in engineering colleges have been filled. In the third round, 40,891 students were called for counselling, of which 23,716 were allotted seats. At the end of the third round of counselling, out of 86,118 students eligible, 55,378 were allotted seats. At least, nine engineering colleges, out of a total of 440, managed to fill all their seats.