The Web Counselling introduced for the first time from this academic year in the State created some anxious moments for the students. To ease the tension, the authorities added new servers for faster connectivity. Counselling has begun at 50 centres across the state and the last date for web counselling has been extended till August 25.

Academicians have urged the government to instill confidence in students and parents. They pointed out that in the previous online counselling system, students had the advantage of comparing different courses and options. The experts were of the view that according to the present system, even top rankers were at a disadvantage as they might end up in the less-preferred college or course.

In this year’s Eamcet engineering counselling, a total of 520 colleges are participating and the number of seats available in Single Window-1 (Conveners quota) rose to 1,99,265. In single window-II for the Muslim minority, 5,865 seats are available in 16 colleges while 7,830 seats are there in 17 colleges in single window-III for Christian Minority. About 4,200 seats in 13 colleges have been kept pending as they are yet to choose the window for admissions.

Even before the counselling dates for Eamcet were announced, the conveners and committee chairman of Eamcet Counselling asked the candidates to be cautious while choosing options during counselling. The actual web process starts after the verification stage and one has to clearly understand the process to gain mileage from this system.

Home Work

In web counselling, one has to do some homework before entering the options. The options can be multiple and there is no limit to the choice of colleges. But the disadvantage here is that the option automatically freezes with the first priority at the time of allotment. During the given window period, one can log in innumerable times to change the options or add a few more and the last entry would be taken as final. The allotment would take place after five or six days from the day of the last option and would be displayed on the site.

Maiden attempt

All India Engineering Entrance Examination (AIEEE) conducted the web-based counselling last year. Due to the newly implemented system of web-counselling and availability of 3000 options online, it is feared that several candidates failed to lock the right options. There have been reports of many candidates losing their seats even with good ranks just because they failed to select the options properly.

Some experts were of the view that the new method gave students enough time to think and choose their options. However, some students and parents found it difficult to choose colleges and courses of their choice with the given options. Realistically, every student looks at not more than 30 options taking into account the quality of the colleges and proximity to their residence.

In comparison, the earlier process helped them in understanding what seats were full and what were available. “Our options though were limited earlier, we could comfortably choose depending on various parameters. But now despite large number of options there is more confusion,” said Venkataprasad, who accompanied his nephew to a counselling centre.

Counsellor’s advice

Counsellors at the helpline centres said that it was better to run a check through the last year’s seat matrix to understand the option priority on the basis of the course and college. Higher the rank, aspirants should add more options to get the best out of the system. A booklet with details on the colleges and courses with relevant codes are being given to the aspirants at the helpline centres during the verification process to enable them to fill in the online option form with the codes.

Some parents suggested the setting up of more helpline centres and servers to meet the Eamcet rush. They also suggested different log in timings for different ranks to ease the load on the servers and improve connectivity.

APSCHE Chairman’s view

Speaking to TCG, APSCHE Chairman Prof K C Reddy said that all the students would be given a final chance to change options on August 26 and 27 after which options would be frozen. Allotment of seats would be made on August 31. He asked the students from rank 1 to 50,000 to exercise options till August 3. The officials said the problem cropped up due to overloading of servers as thousands of students tried to log in to the website at the same time.

Advantages & Disadvantages

Unlike manual counselling conducted in the previous years, online counselling has a different procedure even though the end result is the same. In the past few years, Eamcet counselling was done at the counseling centers with different dates for different ranks. As a result, top rankers finished their counselling faster than others, while the highest rankers had to wait for their time. There were also phases for reservation-based counselling. This used to be a time consuming process and it would take months to complete.

But online counselling advantage is that it takes less number of days. That could be the reason why the committee took so much time to announce the dates. The preparation time is more but many more months are saved. All the rankers from top to bottom would have their counselling at the same time, including for the reservation quotas.

Students’ fears

There is a fear of misplaced options that may result in loss of seat; so one should place as many options as possible. Students are advised to be careful with Eamcet counselling this year and make sure that they decide all possible options for courses and colleges to increase their chances of getting a seat.