chennai after five years of downward trend engineering colleges witnessed a good admission season this year after four rounds of online counseling 89187 seats 59 have been filled which is 13 more compared to the previous year the number of vacant seats also came down by more than 21000 to 62683of 440 colleges only ten government institutions were able to fill 100 of their intake they include college of engineering guindy and madras institute of technology and 113 colleges filled more than 80 seats compared to 59 last year while 223 colleges filled more than 50 seats compared to 139 the previous yearsix colleges could not attract a single student this year 92 colleges could fill less than 20 seats and 56 colleges could fill less than 10the tamil nadu engineering admissions tnea committee conducted the general online counselling from september 27 to october 17 in four rounds with supplementary counselling yet to be conducted we expect a few hundred more seats to be filled despite several challenges including many students getting identical scores the online counselling process went off smoothly this year tnea secretary t purushothaman saidunder the 75 quota for government school students 7324 seats were filled and 473 seats were filled under special categories such as differentlyabledcareer consultant jayaprakash gandhi said the number of vacant seats may come down to 55000 after supplementary counsellingcomputer science engineering electronics and communication engineering and information technology are the most preferred by students mechanical and civil were the least preferred courses more than 100 colleges have only single digit admissions in mechanical engineering this year gandhi addedr m kishore vicechairman of rmk engineering college said more campus hiring by it companies during the pandemic was one of the major reasons for the positive trend students gave more importance to colleges than courses in the last three rounds which resulted in an overall increase in the number of colleges that filled more than 80 seats this yeare balagurusamy former vicechancellor of anna university said tier2 colleges with 50 admissions would be able to survivehowever colleges with less than 20 admissions cannot provide good infrastructure faculty members around 100 colleges have been continuing to admit students with poor infrastructure and faculty members in the past five years he saidhe asked the all india council for technical education aicte anna university and college managements to come up with alternative plans to save the future of the students who have joined these colleges the state government should close these colleges and transfer students to other colleges balagurusamy said