Hyderabad, March 17: Engineering is no more a favourite course and medicine is regaining its popularity, if the sale of Eamcet-2011 applications is any indication.
About 25,000 seats will remain vacant in engineering even in case all students who applied for Eamcet get qualified for admission. The Eamcet 2011 examination is scheduled to be held on May 8 across the state.
On the last day of submission of Eamcet applications yesterday, the university authorities received 2.51 lakh applications in engineering stream and 56,331 in
medicine stream as against 3.2 lakh forms in engineering and 54,858 applications in medicine streams last year. Though the candidates can submit the applications till April 25 with a late fee of Rs 5,000 and May 5 with late fee of Rs 10,000, the officials feel that not more than 1,000 students are likely to submit their applications.
Till Wednesday, the officials sold about 2.63 lakh applications in engineering and 62,295 applications in medicine stream.
The officials attribute the decrease in the number of engineering applications to the revised norms for admission into engineering colleges.
The All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) is insisting on a minimum score of 50 per cent marks in mathematics, physics and chemistry in Inter exams.
Further, the JNTU-Hyderabad officials who are conducting Eamcet 2011 are also insisting SC and ST candidates to submit a caste certificate issued by the local mandal revenue officer along with the Eamcet application form.
“We feel that both the rules which were mandatory from this year, have discouraged students from applying,” said an official of JNTU-Hyderabad.
–Agencies