Jaipur: In contrast to last year when not even half of the engineering seats were filled, Rajasthan Technical University ( RTU ) is expecting to fill around 60%-70% seats this year.Last year, for 49,187 seats, less than 15,000 applications were received.One of the reasons for less number of applicants last year was the condition to deposit advance amount of Rs 10,000 (refundable) along with the form fees of Rs 700. However, this year, there is no such condition and students can directly apply by depositing form fees.Sunil Sharma, convener of the 2018 exam, said, “Last date of filling the forms is June 30. Till June 12, we have already received 5,500 applications and the number is increasing every day. This is really a positive sign.”Candidates are selected on the basis of JEE Mains rank.An institute round is also conducted for any remaining seats where students can directly apply to the college of their choice.Sharma added that less number of students are opting for engineering because of low rate of placements in the field. “In Rajasthan, students opt for civil, electrical and mechanical engineering due to the scope available in government jobs. In other branches of engineering, placements are not as good as most companies prefer to hire engineers from Bangalore and there is no mechanism to hire graduates from Rajasthan colleges,” said Sharma.For mechanical engineering, equipment is costlier than other streams, hence, investment in infrastructure is poor. Students from Rajasthan also have communication and personality issues which go against them.Information technology, electronics and communication are least popular branches with many colleges having zero sessions for these courses.Generally, girls in Rajasthan prefer blue collar branches like civil, computer science and electronic engineering.

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