IITs fill all 13604 UG Engineering Seats in 2019, First since 2013

New Delhi, August 3 : The 23 Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have reportedly managed to fill all the B.Tech seats for the academic year 2019-20. The official notification from MHRD states that all the 13,604 UG engineering seats at 23 IITs have been filled. The newly added seats for EWS category totalling around 600 have also been filled. This far-fetched fate was last achieved in 2013 when all the B.Tech seats were filled.

Engineering institutes in India, including IITs have long been facing the concern of vacant seats in past years. As per the official statistics, there were around 118 vacants seats in 2018 at all IITs, and some 110 seats in 2017. Before that, 96 seats were vacant in 2016, 32 in 2015, 3 seats in 2015 and 149 seats were vacant in 2014.

Admission in IITs is through JEE Advanced exam, considered to the one of the toughest exams globally. Around 2 lakh students appear for admission in IITs every year and only few manages to get a seat there. Even after facing such stiff competition, students are seen opting institutes, other than IITs. The reason may be a paradigm shift in interest among students, but this does unearths the face of engineering education in India.

Why Students are Dropping IITs

As per the official MHRD reports, Students are increasingly dropping out of their courses at IITs. Around 2400 students have dropped from IITs in the last two years, the most 57% from IIT Delhi and Kharagpur. Another interesting aspect of this official drop information states that 47.5% of students are from reserved categories. The reason for dropout may be students personal decision due to family or medical problems, but there ought to be some institutional factor.