One more chance

New Delhi, May 21: The Indian Institutes of Technology are likely to hold a second round of admissions to fill up seats this year for the first time ever, forced by the realisation that some much-coveted seats are going waste.

The move represents an admission by the IITs that the lure of the country’s greatest engineering education brand may be fading, suggesting that students are increasingly choosing a course of their choice over the IIT tag.

Confirming the move to The Telegraph, the IIT Guwahati director and organising chairman of this year’s joint entrance examination, Gautam Barua, said the second round of admissions would be held to prevent wastage of seats. “We are considering a second round of admissions.… It will not be a second round of counselling, but will be aimed at filling vacant seats.”

The results of the IIT entrance are to be declared on the morning of May 25, sources said.

At present, the IITs set cut-offs for general-category and reserved-category students based on their overall performance and the number of seats available. A counselling session is held where students with ranks up to the number of seats available are given the chance to choose their course. A waiting list is also prepared.

But sources in both the human resource development ministry and the IITs said the waiting list alone did not lead to empty seats filling up any more.

The IITs may need to lower their cut-offs for the second round of selections — something never done before at the premier engineering schools.

Most educational institutions across the country, including some of the best, admit students in several phases, referred to popularly as different stages of counselling. The top set of students are invited first and based on their rank are offered seats in available branches.

Several students turn down seats in the course, or the institution, they are offered, leading to vacancies that are then filled in subsequent rounds of counselling. Often, students “accept” a seat offered to them during counselling, but then don’t take up the course. Such seats are filled through the last rounds of counselling, often after classes for the academic year have begun.

The All India Engineering Entrance Examination, which admits students to the National Institutes of Technology and hundreds of other colleges, follows the system of multiple counselling phases. But the IITs have never in their 58-year-old history held multiple rounds of selections.