RutSum

Counseling at DCE for CEE 2008

The last and final counseling that I attended was for the CEE 2008, which was at DCE, in the Civil Engineering department. Since my rank was 644 in the general category, I was called on 22nd July, 2008. The counseling began at 10:30 am in a large hall which was already packed by the time we arrived. Sneezy was with me, even though his counseling was the next day. He wanted to make sure that he knew everything about the counseling so that he wouldn’t forget anything. Me and Sneezy went up to a notice board where a list was put up which listed the branches that were being offered to us today. Sneezy looked up my name in the list for me and told me that I had been allotted Instrumentation and Control Engineering (ICE) at Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology (NSIT).

As we searched for seats in the hall, some random old guy (probably a professor) kept on blabbering on the mic while everybody conveniently ignored him. Those who have been reading RutSum will know that this wasn’t a new sight for me, and it’s the same at every counseling. When we saw somebody getting up, we immediately went up and grabbed the seats. After that was a long and boring wait for 2 hours. I was called for counseling at around 12:40 pm.

First I went to the registration desk, where I submitted all my original documents and their attested photocopies, which were placed in file which had my name on it. A guy over there wrote down the branch that had been allotted to me on the cover of the file. After that I moved to the stage, where another guy checked my documents and matched the info from my certificates to the info that I had filled up in my form. He moved me to the cashier where I had to submit the draft and Rs. 250 for the NSIT prospectus. Here’s the good part - I told the guy that I did not want the prospectus, and that it wasn’t sure that I’d be staying in NSIT, I could be upgraded to DCE soon. He said either take the prospectus, or leave the admission. Ignoring his blasphemy, I went to the next counter and collected my receipts, and left the place.

Here’s how they went about the branch thing. By default, you are put into a waiting list for upgradation of branch, according to you preference sheet that you filled before. If there is a seat vacant in any branch, the best (with the highest rank) contender who has that branch higher in his preference sheet than the one he has currently got, gets that seat. Consider it as a reverse stack of books, whenever you pull out one, the others fall on it, each one of them occupying the position of the book that was below them. On the other hand, if you were satisfied with the branch you have, and did not want to take part in the upgradation process, you could’ve gone to the ‘freezing’ counter and ‘frozen’ the branch that you have got currently. The upgradation list was updated on the site everyday, so if you got a branch of higher preference and wanted to freeze that, you would have to go and get it frozen on the day that you got upgraded (uptil 5 pm) so as to avoid further upgradation the next day.

Through this upgradation method, I was upgraded to Information Technology (IT) in Delhi College of Engineering (DCE). This is the final branch that I have got after the first round of counseling. Counseling rounds go on till all seats are full. The final branch that I will get, would be announced on 31st December, 2008. The good thing AND the bad thing is that in any case, you can’t be degraded of the branch you currently have in hand. Good for me, I had thought over my choices well before I filled them out. Bad for confused people who had filled their forms in a hurry and now want a branch of lower preference.

If you liked this post, or found it useful, don't forget to subscribe to my RSS feeds. Or you can get my posts delivered to your inbox directly, by subscribing to my feeds by email. Or maybe you'd like to know what I'm doing, by looking at my Jaiku badge. But I don't think you would be dumb enough to waste your time and have a look at what randomness I post on Twitter.