Bangalore, Jul 22 (DHNS) : Thousands of students opting for professional courses through the CET were left confused and anxious on Saturday after the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) published the results of the mock allotment of seats for various colleges.
The KEA officials said that the students can revise the options until 6 am on July 23 the deadline for option entry for real allotment.
Unlike the earlier system of being able to choose from a menu of courses and colleges available, based on one’s ranking, with the assistance of KEA officials, the new system offered just one seat which the candidate has to either accept, reject or carry forward. Many students found that in the absence of information on the bouquet of choices available at the same time, it was difficult to make an informed choice.
“The new allotment system can be compared to ‘shooting in the dark’ because students can’t see the exact availability of seats which used to be displayed on giant screens at the KEA cell in the old system,” one of the parents said.
A senior counsellor said: “In the old system where a student used to appear for the counselling, he/she used to see the availability of colleges and disciplines as per the ranking and the roaster. In the present system, it is more of a gambling while choosing the seat as the students will not have all the information.”
He said the KEA’s new system can’t be compared to the All India Engineering Entrance Examination system, whose selection process has been used as a model. In case of the regional engineering colleges, the colleges are more or less of the same standard/calibre whereas in case of the KEA, the 200 colleges that one has to choose from are not of the same standard.
The KEA, however, maintained that in the real allotment, scheduled for July 25, a student will have four options: 1. Accept the seat and report to the college by July 31. 2. Retain the seat and enroll for the next round. 3. Reject the seat and go for the next round. 4. Neither take the seat nor opt for the next round.
KEA officials claimed that the online system does not have any shortcoming. Students cannot be given a bouquet of choices as the real allotment would be known only when the allottees join or pull out of the college.
“In the online method, students are their own bosses. They should make accurate guess of the seats they can get as per their merit and roaster. We have provided the course-wise and college-wise cut-off percentage,” K Jyoti, KEA Administrative Officer, said.
For this, students should use working sheets and monitor the tracking system where probable allotment is shown.
According to Jyoti, students would do well to retain the seats allotted to them even if they are not keen on accepting them.