Aspirants for admission in Niser at the counseling in Bhubaneswar on Monday. Picture by Sanjib Mukherjee

Bhubaneswar, July 14: The first phase of counselling for admission to the National Institute of Science Education and Reserch (Niser) was conducted today. The number of seats has been enhanced from 50 to 100 this year.

As many as 34,500 students from across the country had applied for the National Entrance and Screening Test (NEST), the qualifying entrance exam for admission to Niser.

“We had 3,450 applicants per seat. General students who secured more than 113 of 200 marks in the test are eligible for the counselling. The cut off marks for OBC is 103 and for SC and ST is 55,” said registrar A.K. Naik.The maximum number of candidates who have appeared the entrance belong to Odisha, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Bengal, Jharkhand and Bihar in that order. The first round of counselling will continue till all seats are filled. The students can withdraw their admissions by July 18.

The second counselling and admission will take place at the institute if the seats are found vacant tentatively around July 21,

Besides Niser, counselling for Centre for Excellence in Basic Sciences (CBS), Mumbai, was also held here at the same venue today. Students and parents present there said they were drawn to Niser because of the high quality of researchers that it has been producing over the past two years.

“We came to know that the last batch of students who graduated this June preferred to peruse higher education and research in some of the top institutes abroad. I have always been interested in research and so I opted for Niser,” said Ananya Banerjee, a student from Bengal.

“Our students get multiple offers from top universities. In fact, this second batch of students has outsmarted their predecessors considering the number of offers they have grabbed. No wonder the demand for the institute has gone up in just a few years of its establishment,” the registrar said.

“We are planning to increase the seat intake to 200 from the next academic year. The institute will be moving to its new campus at Jatni by December,” said Naik.

Niser has requested the state government to allot extra accommodation for its new students.