Engineering counselling: Facilitation centres of pvt colleges lure aspirants

Chennai: With engineering counselling going online from this year, private engineering colleges are also adopting new techniques to lure engineering aspirants by setting up unauthorised facilitation centres across the state.

As on Monday, 1.35 lakh students registered for online engineering counselling with 1.28 lakh students completing the process. The last date for submission of online application is on June 2.

“Many engineering colleges have taken to social media that they are facilitating free online registration for engineering aspirants. The service is already provided for free at the Tamil Nadu Engineering Admissions Facilitation Centres (TFCs),” a source said.

Some of them even circulating messages in WhatsApp groups asking students to bring the mobile phone, Aadhaar card, community certificate, plus 2 hall ticket, class 10 mark sheet to register the applications.

There are positives and negatives in registering the application at the private engineering college.

“The college may obtain the password to manipulate the choices or try to influence the students to join in their college. On a positive note, the parents and students can physically verify the facilities in the college,” the source said.

There are allegations that private engineering colleges are wary of online engineering counselling as they were not sure of filling up their seats. So, they started canvassing for students using various methods. “Representatives of private engineering colleges are directly visiting schools and making promises that the fees would be as low as Rs 25,000,” a parent said.

Educated parents are clear about what the preferences and are not going to these centres set up by private engineering colleges.

But, first generation parents and students are vulnerable. “As most of the applicants are first-generation graduates there is a chance that these students might get trapped,” a professor said.

Online engineering counselling is introduced to avoid unnecessary travel and tension for parents and students. A majority of students are registering applications from their home.

“If students filed their online application apart from a TFC or in their home, it is better that they could go to TFCs and change their password to avoid any manipulation,” said career consultant Jayaprakash A. Gandhi.

He further said the students have to log in only to the authorized websites of Anna University and TNEA.

“They should not get carried away by other unauthorized websites or mobile apps,” he warned.

“TFCs have been set up only in government engineering colleges, university constituent colleges, polytechnic colleges, government arts and science colleges. No TFCs have been set up in any private institutions,” said V. Rhymend Uthariaraj, secretary, TNEA.

“Even if they have registered their applications elsewhere they can approach the nearby TFCs to change their password and secure their login information,” he said.

Mushrooming of unauthorised websites confuses students, parents

Students and parents applying for engineering counselling are confused by unauthorized websites which have mushroomed after the starting of online registration.

Websites with the identical name of official websites such as www.tnea2018.in, http://tnea.net.in/, www.tnea.in.net, www.annauniversitycounselling.com have commenced since the announcement of online counselling.

Even parents with reasonable education background are also looking at these websites to clarify their doubts which could not provide any authentic information.

“Parents should go to Anna University’s website instead of googling TNEA website. That is what leads to these websites,” one of the parents said.

Though these sites giving disclaimers that they are not affiliated to TNEA or Anna University, it is displayed at the bottom of the screen and in small fonts, so parents are missing the information.

“Some of these sites are providing links to the official sites while others are providing tools like TNEA 2018 cut-off marks analysis tools. But multiple sources of information will lead to confusion,” another parent said.

Many mobile apps are also gaining popularity. Mobile apps such as TN Engg Counselling App, TNEA counselling guide and TNEA online 2018 are being downloaded by thousands of students.

“We have two authorized web portals www.annauniv.edu and https://tnea.ac.in. Students and parents should look for clarifications or upadates only in these websites,” said V.Rhymend Uthariaraj, secretary, TNEA.

TNEA also launched helplines for students and parents - 044-22359901 to 20 (20 lines). They can also mail their query to tnea2018@annauniv.edu.