The CET Counselling Experience!

I had avoided going through the CET counselling process five years ago as I managed to somehow sneak into NITK Surathkal by bagging a decent rank in AIEEE. But today I had to partake in that "rigorous" process as I accompanied my brother for his counselling.

On the way in the bus my brother met his friend who had bagged a rank of about 700 or 800. Normally such a rank would let him gain admission into the top colleges of the state but he had in turn chosen a not-so-great college in his hometown. The reason was the college was at a walkable distance from his residence. Somewhat seems to be a good reason but wait; I also came to know that he had spent a hell lot of money for "IIT Coaching" and something called as a "5-in-1" coaching (God only knows what that means). My question is why spend unnecessary on all these extra coachings when you are choosing a college that does not need a very good rank to get in? This guy had finished his counselling formalities 2 days back but he told me that he liked the city and had put up in his relatives place and was roaming around the city randomly by making use of the thirty bucks BMTC daily pass.

18th Cross, Sampige Road is where the CET Cell is located and to be on the safer side we arrived there well in advance. The road was littered with representatives of a few engineering colleges who were handing out cool multicolored pamphlets describing how great their college was and how great their labs were. Some of them are really funny - one image involves two people standing awkwardly in front of what looks like an circuit board and some wires sticking out of it and one wire from it is connected to an oscilloscope which apparenly shows nothing on the screen!! It must have been switched off. Those two guys spent a lot of time and energy trying to give a cool pose and must have forgotten to switch the poor oscilloscope on. If you people have seen photos of hunters posing with their kill - yeah, this one looks like that.

After wading through hordes of these people, I entered the building. A huge gathering had assembled in front of the hall. There was a huge screen displaying the seats available in the different colleges for the different categories - 1G, 3G, GMK, GMR, KKR etc. There is a
tall fence that encloses the building and there is a small gate at the far corner where 2 heavily armed guards stand watch. A loudspeaker which is not loud enough thanks to all the candidates and their parents chattering incessantly, keeps on announcing the "range" of ranks and if our ranks happen to fall in that number space, we are supposed to authenticate to the armed guards who open the gates so that we can get into the other side of the fence. Our turn arrived and we got in.

Here we are supposed to wait in another hall. A form was handed out to us which we were supposed to fill. There was a loudspeaker here too that announced the rank ranges and when our turn arrived, we were shifted to yet another hall where we had to wait for our turn to get our documents verified. It took quite some time to get over this process and when it was finally over, we were again moved to another waiting hall (thankfully this was the last one) where we were called by the counsellor after some time and luckily my brother happened to get the seat which he wanted.

Only one parent or guardian is supposed to accompany the candidate and somehow both the parents of a few candidates had managed to sneak in. The officials quickly found out this breach of rule and when the "extra" people were asked to leave, some did not like it, some thought that it was impolite and rude and some verbal exchanges happened. After paying the admission fees and recieving the admission order, we escaped out of the building.

All the students coming out of the CET cell after the formalities bore a happy and "energetic" expression on their face cuts unaware of what lay ahead and more than the students it was the parents who were proudly walking alongside. Because soon they can say -

"Ree, namm huduga Yanjineering madthavne. E yaand C. Hoon. Yelectraaniks yaand....Marthoythu. Aeno idhe aamele.."


My congratulations to all the candidates and also to their parents for providing them with guidance and support.

P.S: I have been extremely tired due to this long ordeal and I havent bothered to proof read and check for errors. Please forgive me if there are any errors.

And see this wonderful video by mindryin about CET counselling. 5 stars!!