COIMBATORE: In what should come as a shocker for managements of second rung self-financing engineering colleges, the sale of applications for the Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions (TNEA 2011) has dipped by over 18 per cent, compared to the previous year.Consequently, more than 55,000 application forms are lying unutilised at the Anna University, the nodal agency for the TNEA, which had printed 2.2 lakh application forms anticipating greater demand from aspirants.At the close of the deadline for issuing the applications for filling up the BE/BTech seats under the government quota on Tuesday, the Anna University in Chennai had sold just 1,64,245 forms. Besides, the TNEA website has received around 5,000 hits for online registration.“The number of applications sold this year is lesser by about 40,000. In 2010, over 2.01 lakh application forms were sold, which was an increase by over 43,000 compared to the figures registered in 2009,” V Rhymend Uthariaraj, Secretary, TNEA 2011 told Express.One of the reasons for the relatively lukewarm response from aspirants this year, according to him, could be the fact that the sale of application forms had commenced on May 16, nearly a week after the State Board Class XII examination results were declared. “Last year, though we sold 2.01 lakh application forms, we received only around 1.6 lakh filled up application forms. Many students had purchased the application forms before the Class XII results were declared last year,” he said.Anna University of Technology (AUT Chennai) Vice Chancellor C Thangaraj expressed surprise at the dip in sale of applications. “It defies understanding on why there is a dip when even in arts and science colleges more applications have been sold. This year, more students had become eligible for engineering admissions and the cut-offs too had increased as they performed well in the Class XII exams. Job opportunities for engineering graduates have increased,” he said. The last date for submitting the filled in applications is June 3.
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