This year, the Directorate of Technical Education (DTE), Maharashtra, had tried to ease the process for engineering aspirants seeking admission in the state-run colleges. The Centralised Admission Process (CAP) was set to give students a second change to improve their college allocation, or so they were made to believe. The problem with CAP, however, is that it isn’t taking the stress off the students. The engineering aspirants had welcomed the move to replace the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) with the Maharashtra Common Entrance Test (MHT-CET), but now they feel that by introducing CAP, DTE has retained, at least part of the complications left behind by JEE.

Students are dreading the centralised allocation process. Aditya Jaswani, an engineering aspirant from Mumbai, said, “I have read about the complications that occurred in the Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) process last year. I only hope that CAP doesn’t lead to a similar mess.” Coaching institutes in Mumbai are conducting seminars for their students to acquaint them with the new process of application and how to make the most of it.

Another aspirant, Gautam Naik, said, “It was more convenient when we had to go personally to the colleges to submit our application form. I agree the travelling and crowd at admission centres was a hassle, but it was more stress-free than CAP.” The idea of CAP was to prevent seats going vacant in many engineering colleges as well as reduce the number of aspirants who were left without a seat in any state college. CAP was meant to bridge the gap between these two factors.

This is where the argument of the Non-Zero policy comes in. As per this policy, the DTE allows admission to a student who has earned a non-zero positive score in the MHT-CET. It means that irrespective of your low score, you are assured admission to a state college by DTE. This policy then contradicts the purpose of CAP to reduce the number of students being left without a college seat.

Chinmay Ghanekar, MHT-CET 2016 topper, who had also appeared for JEE, said, “Even if I get admission into one of the top state colleges such as the College of Engineering, Pune, or Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute, Mumbai, I will leave that seat for admission in an NIT.” Students tend to leave seats in state colleges to pursue better college opportunities in other states or cities. And since the CAP allocation process will be done before the JoSAA allocation process even starts, there is a good chance that students will want to switch over from a Maharashtra state college to an IIT, NIT or IIIT in July.

The idea of CAP may or may not be successful, but the general notion amongst students is that it will complicate the admission process. However, whether or not it will bring good news to students will only be clear after the allocation is complete.

CAP is receiving student registration till July 16 and will release the merit list by June 22, 2016. For further queries regarding MHT-CET or CAP, students should leave their questions in the comments section below, and we will get back to them with an answer as soon as possible.