An Approach for Improving Admissions: A Case Study of an Unaided Undergraduate Engineering Institute

Engineering is one of the most preferred career options for the students. Although this field has witnessed a decline in the recent past, the impact of this decline on reputed educational institutes is negligible. Students line up for admissions in premier institutes and prefer to wait beyond the final round up to the spot round. A study was conducted in a premier unaided engineering college to design an approach for attracting students resulting in maximum allotment and conversion of the allotted students in actual admissions. Perception of the students admitted in the institute from A.Y. 2017-18 to A.Y. 2021-22 was collected to understand factors in selecting the institute. Correlation analysis was employed to analyze the perception of 839 students of A.Y. 2021-22. Weights of the factors revealed that three out of the nine factors accounted for more than 50% of the student perceptions. Certain initiatives were undertaken at the institute level to achieve 100% CAP allotment and conversion of the allotted students into actual admissions. As a result of these initiatives, a significant change was noted in the allotment and conversion of the allotted students into actual admissions. During the A.Y. 2023-24, the allotment was 100% and 64.36% of the allotted students accepted their seat and reported to the institute within the first two rounds. Around 93.31% of students reported in for admissions in three rounds. The institute initiatives also influenced the preference code option exercised by the students while filling the admission option form. It was observed that during A.Y. 2022-23 and A.Y. 2023-24, more than half of the students admitted in the institute had provided a preference choice for their admission between 1 and 10 thereby indicating that they were mostly inclined to seek admission in one of the ten branches offered by the institutenumber of students and increase the conversion rate of students allotted during the centralized admission process.