Hyderabad: Mechanical and civil are not dusty old streams of engineering but among the most sought-after in Telangana, more than computer science.

In the Telangana State Post Graduate Engineering Common Entrance Test, results of which were released last week, 41,281 took the exam. Of these, 35,093 (85.01 per cent) qualified. Electronics and communication engineering proved to be the most sought-after course with 8,774 aspirants, followed by 6,490 for civil, 6,359 for electrical and 5,769 for mechanical engineering. Nearly 66 per cent of the applications were for these four streams.

There was a huge difference in the choice of PG courses between boys and girls. While ECE remained the top choice for boys, girls preferred computer science and electrical. A total of 1,498 girls applied for civil and 500 for mechanical engineering. PG in pharmacy received 7,142 applications, or 17 per cent. Of these 4,316 were girls.
The test was conducted for 18 courses. Of these, seven did not receive even 100 applications. Five of the courses managed to get less than 500 applications.

Biomedical engineering, biotechnology and chemical engineering received less than 100 applications; metallurgy, nanotechnology, architecture and planning, aerospace engineering, food technology, geo-engineering and geo-informatics, instrumentation engineering and textile technology received less than 500. The least number of applications were received for textile technology that was just nine.

Prof. S. Ramachan-dram, convener of the test, said, “It has been observed that students not just qualified but also got good marks, especially in civil, electrical, mechanical and electronics streams. I feel they were very well prepared keeping the state government job openings in these streams in mind