Students shape their career as CET counseling begins

Mangalore, June 21: The counselling for admission for medical seats available under government quota began here on Monday at the Mangalore counselling centre set up at the Sahyadri College of Engineering.

The day's proceedings were marred by a technical glitch that was corrected by afternoon, coordinator for the Mangalore CET centre Shruthakeerthiraja said. The software application that displayed the number of seats available was not getting updated automatically, but by afternoon the system was up and running smoothly, Mr. Shruthakeerthiraja said.

As many as 108 students from Dakshina Kannada, Udupi, Chikmaglur, and Kodagu districts are registered with the Mangalore Counselling Centre. Of these, 86 students selected their seats on the first day and eight of them included dental course seats.

Students were satisfied with the arrangements.

Hemant from Sakleshpura said that the arrangements were satisfactory and that he did not face any problems. With a rank of 24 in CET, he was the first to be counselled and obtain a seat at Bangalore Medical College in Bangalore. “I am happy that I got into the college of my choice. I wanted to be a doctor since I was a child,” he said.

Hobby side-stepped

Twins Sankhya and Sanket, who studied at a college in the city, have obtained 496th and 818th CET rank numbers respectively. Their parents are both Associate Professors in Mathematics at colleges in Udupi. Apparently, the hard work of the two students has paid off. Both would have classes from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., they said. They would take a two-hour break after 7 p.m. and then come back to books, Sankhya said. While she gave a two-year break to her Bharatanatyam training in order to score well, her brother set aside the violin until the examinations were over, she said.

However, once her admission was finalised she planned to get back to her hobby again. Shwetha R. Poojary, who obtained rank number 25 in CET, said that studying biology had convinced her to study medicine. Until the first year in pre-university, she had her sights set on studying engineering but exposure to biology changed her mind, she said.

The counselling took place in an orderly manner. It was organised in four sessions that began at 8 a.m., 10 a.m., 1 p.m., and 4 p.m. It will continue for two more days.

On Monday, rank numbers 1-400 were open for counselling during the morning session while 401-800 were filled up in the afternoon, Mr. Shruthakeerthiraja said.