Engineering seat? Your search ends here!

The other day I accompanied my cousin to his EAMCET counseling session for a seat in one of the engineering colleges in Hyderabad. My cousin explained, “Look, when they counsel thousands of students a day, you can’t expect them to call us one by one. They will call a batch of 200 students at a time”. Also, we were not given any list of colleges where seats were available. I had to buy it.

I went to a kiosk and asked for the list. He demanded 20 bucks. I obeyed. He further enquired, “Who are you buying it for – boy or a girl?” Crap! I didn’t ask for a train ticket to Chennai; nor did I ask for a t-shirt. He continued, “The list is different for boys and girls.” Enlightened, I took the boys' list.

Going through the list, I felt like an ignorant duck! There were myriad newly established colleges with names like xyET, xyST, xyTS, xySE and xyIT (they are all acronyms where x, y = a,b,c,..z) Actually working out with the basic knowledge of permutations, there could have up to 5*26*26 = 3380 colleges across the state. The actual number wasn’t as big, but quite close. I am sure, with the kind of aggression the state is ‘commissioning’ the colleges, it would by next year. After all, what more does it take to establish an engineering college than a double storied building?

We were called to the final counseling hall in 3 installments. First two stages were just fitted in to make the ‘Q’ longer and for the candidates to feel that the process has begun, though, in reality, we were 2 hours away from the summit. In the final hall there were 6 numbers of 59” LCD’s displaying vacant seats (includes reserved seats for SC’s, ST’s, OBC’s, PH etc.) And the list of selected of candidates who got selected to various colleges was being flashed on the wall using a projector. The whole hall looked like a Stock Exchange. We brokers stood there making a detailed analysis of the dregs that were left out after a major chunk of opportunities had been catered to the privileged; if one is not OK with what he’s got he always has an option of buying it – in NRI or Management quota, of course!

By the way, my cousin got in to xyET, where x = H and y = I.