A total of 3.85 lakh students have registered for the Maharashtra State Common Entrance Test (MH CET) for admissions to engineering and pharmacy courses in the state the registration closed on Thursday evening. The number of applicants eligible for engineering seats went up from 2.62 lakh in 2016 to 2.90 lakh this year, with an overall increase of 30,000 students.
Till Thursday 5 pm, the Directorate of Technical Education (DTE) had received a total of 3,85,000 applications for admissions to engineering and pharmacy courses across the state. While 2.90 lakh students have applied for Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics (PCM), and Physics, Chemistry, Mathematics and Biology (PCMB), who are all eligible for engineering courses, around 94,000 students have opted for PCB alone, who are pharmacy aspirants.
"This year, there has been an increase in the number of applicants for engineering admissions. This is a positive sign as the demand seems to have picked up again after a brief period of low applications in the last couple of years. If majority of the students secure their seats in the colleges allotted, lesser seats would be vacant this year," said Dayanand Meshram, Joint Director, DTE. Close to 50 per cent seats across engineering colleges were vacant last year. "The increasing number of aspirants might not necessarily translate into admissions as a large number of JEE aspirants also look at the CET as a back up," said the principal of an engineering college in the city.
Last year, a total of 4.09 lakh students had applied for medical, pharmacy and engineering courses. However, with the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) being made mandatory now, medical aspirants would not appear for the CET. The DTE is yet to announce the total number of seats up for grabs in 2017. Last year, close to 1.38 lakh seats were available for engineering alone." The final number of seats for 2017 would only be known after all the colleges surrender their seats by April," added Meshram.
While 40 per cent of the total aspirants who have registered for the exam are girls, nine students have registered in the transgender category. This year, along with the inclusion of the third gender category, the DTE has made several changes in the exam structure and admission process of CET. This includes making the forms simpler and user friendly, and changing the exam timetable to suit the requirements of all the students.
The examination would be conducted on May 11, 2017.
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