Chennai: Tamil Nadu State Government has lowered the eligibility criteria for admission into BE and B Tech courses, this year. The decision was made as due to the high eligibility marks, many seats for the B.E./B.Tech courses in the self-financing engineering colleges remained vacant.
K. Ponmudy, Higher Education Minister, has said that the government had received numerous representations from MLAs and owners and principals of private engineering colleges to decrease the eligibility criteria for admissions. He also added that they were told that several neighboring states have the eligibility criteria of only pass marks for admissions to such colleges, and that they should adopt the same measures for Tamil Nadu too.
Candidate from the Open Competition (OC) category will be eligible to join the engineering colleges with only a percentage of 50 percent in higher secondary examinations, form this academic session. Earlier, the prescribed eligibility percentage was 55 percent. As per sources, the government in 2008 has decreased the eligibility criteria for several categories of candidates by 5 percent slabs.
Candidates belonging to Backward Classes (BC) category with only an aggregate of 45 percentage would be able to get admission into BE / B Tech course, which was 50 percent before. Also, a student from the Most Backward Classes (MBC) category would be able to get admission with an aggregate percentage of 40 percent, which was 45 percent before. For candidates who belong to the Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes category, the eligibility percentage is only 35 percent.
