High scorers blame online process for not getting desired engg colleges

As admissions for engineering colleges are coming to an end, around 23,000 aspirants in the state have still not been able to find a seat.

Many students with high scores were disappointed when they failed to get admission to the top engineering colleges of the city. Representation pic/thinkstock

What makes matters worse is that even the students who have secured seats through the online process are unhappy with the college allotted to them. Most of them feel that the online system ruined their chances of getting into the top engineering colleges.

"My daughter had scored 93 per cent in PCM and 89 per cent in HSC, with a good score in CET. She had a good chance of getting admitted to any of the top institutes of Mumbai. However, even though she had applied through the home university category in the online process, she was allotted a seat through the All-India category, and she missed bagging a seat in the top-three colleges," said the mother of one student.

While her daughter had applied to institutes like VJTI and Thadomal Shahani College of Engineering, for the electrical engineering course, she was disappointed with the final college allotted to her. "She had not applied in that category. My daughter is a domicile of Mumbai and has studied in the city her entire life," her mother added.

When they visited the Directorate of Technical Education (DTE) to make enquires, they were not given any satisfactory answers. "Students who have scored less than her have gotten into prestigious colleges. It is not fair for children who have worked hard to score well."

Similar was the case with Disha Parekh (name changed), who secured 90 per cent in PCM and 83 per cent in HSC. Parekh was disappointed when her name did not appear in the colleges she had applied for. "The recent change in admission process has caused a lot of problems. I could've easily gotten through a college of my choice, but my name did not appear in the two online rounds.

I had to finally settle for a seat in a fairly new college that had seats available," said Parekh, who is now planning to skip this year and apply for engineering colleges in 2015. "For now, I'm applying for another college offline, and hope there might be a few seats left," she added.

Deadline extended
After receiving many queries from students, the DTE has extended their offline admissions (close counselling) till August 2. "After the order from Supreme Court, there were two rounds online and a close counselling round. Our centres have received many queries from applicants and, therefore, we have extended the deadline by two days.

We hope that, by then, every student will be allotted a seat in a college," informed Dayanand Meshram, joint director of DTE. While Meshram admitted that they have received many complaints from students about mistakes in the online process, he rubbished these claims.

However, the Junior College Teachers' Association believes that the deadline should be extended more, and that the DTE should increase the number of help centres in the state. "There are only two city centres, which is insufficient if DTE wants to clear the backlog (of 23,000 students)," Anil Deshmukh, from the association, said.

He added that, unlike last year, when only 3,000 students were without seats during the counselling round, this year, with the number close to 23,000, it would be a close call. "Officials need to take the matter seriously; the future of many students is at stake," Deshmukh said.