CHENNAI: The single window counselling for engineering admissions currently under way at four centres has revealed interesting trends. While some courses have gone up in popularity, others languish for want of takers.

An analysis by Salem-based educational consultant Jayaprakash Gandhi shows that quite a few self-financing colleges are fighting for survival. As on August13, not a single seat had been filled in 42 such colleges.

So far, the only college that has filled all its seats, including those under the reservation quota, is the Madras Institute of Technology. For the first time in many years, it has overtaken the College of Engineering, Guindy.

Out of the 18,320 seats filled so far under the SWS, 13,889 seats — nearly 75.8 per cent as against 64.5 per cent last year — have gone to the "circuit branches," the reason being placement drives by IT companies. Among the "circuit branches," electronics and communication engineering has accounted for 4,702 seats and computer science, 3,681 seats.

Some courses proved quite popular. All seats in the electrochemical engineering course offered by the Central Electrochemical Research Institute, Karaikkudi, and in food technology, geo-informatics, electric and electronics (sandwich), industrial engineering, mining engineering, pharmaceutical technology, printing and rubber technology have been filled.

Among other streams, biomedical engineering fared the worst, with only 61 of the available 230 seats being filled so far. While 1,706 students (9.3 per cent) opted for mechanical engineering, 604 (3.3 per cent) chose civil engineering, 531(2.9 per cent) biotech engineering, 229 aeronautical engineering and 202, chemical engineering.

In many colleges, not a single seat has been filled, even for the circuit branches. Out of 206 colleges offering electrical and electronic engineering, there were no takers for 103 colleges. Also, 86 of the 155 colleges offering mechanical engineering, 53 of the 177 colleges offering information technology and 48 of the 223 colleges offering computer science engineering went without a single seat being filled.

While 82 per cent of the available aeronautical engineering seats have been filled, 61.5 per cent of biotech engineering, 52.7 per cent of computer science and 52.5 per cent of ECE seats have also been filled.

The trend clearly shows a decline in preference for EEE and mechanical engineering: as against the 42 per cent and 40 per cent of the seats filled up respectively at the close of the second week's counselling last year, only 34.3 and 31.2 percent seats found takers this year. Not even a single student opted for textile chemistry and chemical technology (cement technology).

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