Almost 50,000 engineering applicants did not show up for the certificate verification procedure for getting an Engineering seat in Tamil Nadu this year — a whopping 31 percent of the total number of applicants. This being the first year that Anna University moved their counselling process online, one of the caveats they had laid down was that students who went the online route would have to go to one of 42 certificate checking hubs to have the certificates verified. Not getting it done means that they automatically forfeit their right to a seat.
According to an article in Deccan Chronicle, of the 1,59,632 candidates who were called for certificate verification, only 1,09,850 candidates turned up. Last year, of 1.31 lakh applicants, only 87,000 candidates were placed in colleges and this year the number is expected to be between 90,000 to one lakh.
Could this mean that the number of engineering aspirants is sliding further down or is this the end of the engineering college dream? The authorities say that they haven't gotten around to analyzing the reason yet but feel that maybe more students chose to go to private institutions this year. Speaking to Edex, Rhymend Uthariaraj, Secretary, Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions said that the authorities haven't yet analyzed the reasons for why there was such a huge number of students missing from the certificate verification this year. "Maybe students chose to pursue self-financing courses or got seats through management quota or they might have joined deemed-to-be universities. The other reason could be that more students have chosen arts and science streams this year," he explained.
Uthariaraj added that the students were repeatedly alerted about the deadlines and the schedule was very well designed to suit the convenience of students,"All the students were sent an individual SMS about the verification and the following day those who didn't turn up were against sent an SMS, even the evening before the last day the students who had remained absent were sent SMSs individually. So all the information was provided and all the essential efforts were made to make the whole procedure easy for students," he explained.
When asked if the introduction of online counseling this year could have led to students becoming wary of the procedure, Uthariaraj completely disagreed,"There is no way that the decision to go online could have stopped students from coming because the whole procedure is much easier this year. The students did not have to travel all the way to Chennai for certificate verification because we set up centres in every district this year. The online procedure is only the second session, this was only certificate verification, so there is no question of any difficulty," the secretary said.
