Intake to med, dental courses from Aug 21

Panaji: After a long wait due to the recent NEET controversy, the first round of admissions for seats to the medical and dental degree programme in Goa is now expected to take place only between Aug 21 and 31. The directorate of technical education (DTE) said that the final round of admissions for engineering and pharmacy seats can take place only after completion of the round for medical and dental seats. Despite this delay, officials said that they plan to wrap up the admissions’ season by the first week of Sep.

Around 3,200 students in Goa have applied for NEET-based programmes in the state for admissions to medicine, dentistry, homeopathy, ayurveda, nursing, and the five allied health programmes. DTE had already called for applications from students for NEET-based programmes earlier.

Now, after getting the green light from the Centre, DTE will first prepare the eligibility and merit list for admissions to medical and dental courses and begin the counselling process from around Aug 21.

Under normal circumstances, the merit list for NEET-based programmes would have been released by the third week of June.

Only after the first round for NEET-based programmes are completed will the final round for admission to engineering programmes be held. With the completion of the first round of over 1,500 seats in the five colleges, around 400 were left vacant. Following this, DTE decided to allow students who had not appeared for the joint entrance examination (JEE), to apply for the vacant seats in view of the large number of vacancies.

But despite this relaxation, only around 65 seats have been claimed, officials said. The remaining will be up for grabs in the final round in the first week of Sep. For the final round too, DTE will relax the JEE criteria. Students can seek admissions as long as they meet all other criteria for admissions set by the All India council for technical education (AICTE); such as a minimum score of 45% in physics-chemistry-mathematics (PCM) at their Class XII board exams for general students, and 40% for those in reserved categories.

During the earlier admission rounds, students showed a preference for engineering programmes in information technology and computer engineering, in keeping with the trend in recent years.

The mechanical engineering stream did not show much appeal to students.