Thanks to the lateral entry system of admissions introduced in Anna University this year, all the 632 seats that went vacant last year in the four campus colleges of the university have been taken up by diploma students from across the state. Lateral entry counselling, hitherto reserved for private and constituent colleges of Anna University and regional colleges, was introduced in the four campus colleges of the university for the first time this year. 

“Through this lateral entry counselling, diploma students are allowed to join second-year B Tech courses directly. We managed to fill all the 632 lapsed seats through lateral admissions this year,” Anna University vice-chancellor R Velraj said. 

In order to deal with the recurring problem of seats going waste in the premier engineering university, primarily because of students abandoning their engineering seats after getting admission to medical courses, the state government had postponed engineering counselling this year to help students decide whether to pursue medicine or engineering based on their NEET result (the entrance exam for MBBS and BDS courses).

The higher education department had also introduced a new rule this year which mandated students to pay fee and join engineering colleges of their choice within seven days of allotment of seat through counselling. The Tamil Nadu Engineering Admission (TNEA) counselling scheduled to start on August 25 commenced on September 10, two days after the publication of NEET results. 

198 students did not join AU after paying fee

The counselling concluded on November 13. As per data shared by the university, 424 students failed to join Anna University campuses last year after selecting those seats in counselling and 208 students discontinued after securing MBBS seats in NEET. This year, 198 students did not join after paying fee and 114 abandoned their seats after getting admissions to medical colleges.”

Compared to last year’s vacancy of 632 seats, which was nearly 25% of the total seats, vacancies in the four premier institutes this year (302 of total 2,440 seats) was relatively better.“The vacancy figures have come down by almost 50% this year and it is a big improvement. But we are still working to find out more ways through which we can manage to reduce the figure,” R Velraj said.

According to the admission data, among the four campus colleges of Anna University, College of Engineering, Guindy (CEG) has the highest number of vacancies. At least 139 seats are lying vacant in CEG, 101 in Alagappa College of Technology, 55 seats in Madras Institute of Technology, and seven seats are vacant in the School of Architecture and Planning.

632 lapsed seats filled this yearLateral entry counselling, hitherto reserved for private and constituent colleges of Anna University, was introduced in the four campus colleges of the university this year. About 302 seats went vacant this year.  “We managed to fill all the 632 that lapsed last year,” Anna University vice-chancellor R Velraj said