Engineering degree and diploma courses to start
by spetember 25

As many as 27,000 students eagerly awaiting admission to degree and diploma engineering courses in the state could hope to see their classes begin by September 25, informed a senior official of the centralised degree admission committee here on Friday. The admission procedure to various disciplines of degree and diploma in engineering and pharmacy, medical, dental, physiotherapy, ayurvedic and homeopathy begins at the L.D. College of Engineering on September 6.

Severe competition is anticipated among more than 40,000 contenders for the various technical courses in the offing, both in the state and for the limited number of seats at the Regional Engineering Colleges outside the state considering the whopping 70.62 success rate of HSCE (science). There are 8,622 degree engineering, 3,240 diploma engineering, 693 degree pharmacy and 540 diploma pharmacy seats in the state.

"The list of applicants seeking admission to engineering and pharmacy colleges is huge, and there are as many as 24,000 students who rank in the merit list, whose minimum qualifying number is 225. For the same number last year, we had about 15,000 students in the merit list," remarked central degree admission committee coordinator H.N. Prajapati adding that 2,787 additional seats have been added to the existing engineering and pharmacy seats in 2001-02 to attend to the rush.

"Unlike last year when 183 seats in civil, textile technology and textile engineering found no takers, there is hardly any possibility of vacancies this year," he said. Apart from engineering and pharmacy courses, more than 12,000 applicants have filled forms for 1,275 M.B.B.S, 280 dental and 160 physiotherapy seats, 8,994 applicants have filled the forms for392 ayurvedic seats while 4,973 have applied for 800 homeopathy courses.

"Compared to last academic year when 18,674 applications were received for degree/diploma, engineering and pharmacy, we have received 27,437 applications this year. Applicants for the seats of medical, dental, physiotherapy have doubled this year to 12,000 compared to last year," Prajapati informed.

Five committees – degree/diploma, engineering and pharmacy committee, medical, dental and physiotherapy committee, Ahmedabad Medical College committee, Surat Medical College committee, ayurvedic committee and homeopathy would monitor the admission procedure that is likely to go on till November 1. "As many as 600 to 1,500 students would be given admission to the courses depending on the availability of the seats and their merit marks," he informed.

Republished from The Asian Age