Karnataka Counselling 2025: Thousands of Seats Left Vacant in KCET & COMEDK; Reasons and Insights

Karnataka’s engineering admission 2025 saw more than 33,000 vacant seats remaining after multiple rounds of COMEDK and KCET counselling. While top courses, such as Computer Science and related IT courses, see an increasing demand, core engineering branches like Civil and Mechanical courses remain vacant. Several reasons have contributed to this; continue reading as we try to break down a few of these to understand the trends.

Karnataka Counselling Over; Vacant Seats for COMEDK and KCET announced; Here's What Data Reveals

The Karnataka 2025 counselling finally comes to an end. Two major entrance exams and counselling processes in the state are KCET and COMEDK. The Karnataka Common Entrance Test (KCET) is conducted for admission to government share seats at various institutes in the state. The COMEDK UGET exam is conducted for admission to private engineering seats. The KCET counselling was held in 3 rounds while the COMEDK counselling was conducted in 4 rounds. Both the counselling processes are now concluded and the respective authorities have released the data on the vacant seats. The COMEDK vacant seats add up to 18,578, while there are 14,940 vacant seats out of the KCET 2025 counselling.

This makes a total of 33,518 vacant seats after the Karnataka counselling season. These vacant seats will now be available through the management quota with higher fees. Such a high number of vacant seats signifies a deeper challenge that can be dealt with by making the right choices keeping in mind the current industry trends and the student demands. 

Karnataka Engineering Counselling Highlights

Below are some data highlights on the Karnataka counselling for both COMEDK UGET and KCET:

• The Consortium of Medical, Dental and Engineering Colleges in Karnataka (COMEDK) recently published the vacant seats after the COMEDK round 4 decision making process. Based on the final decisions made by the students, 18,578 seats remain vacant after the conclusion of the counselling process.
• The COMEDK UGET counselling started with 26,837 seats initially and saw several additions and reductions in the available seats throughout the various rounds of counselling.
• The Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) has released the vacant seats after the KCET counselling. As per the notification, 14,940 engineering seats remain unfilled at the end of the counselling process.
• The core engineering branches such as civil, electronics and communication and mechanical engineering remain vacant while CS and IT courses remain in high demand.
• Also the top reputed colleges have less vacancies compared to lesser known colleges.
• A reason for this is because of the college reputation, consistent placement performance and other facilities and initiatives at the institute.

What Measures Should Be Taken To Bridge This Gap?

The student’s trends and demands are clear and indicate this is not a one-off chance but a rising occurrence. To tackle this, it is important to understand what is the demand and alter the supply to meet the demands. By now it is evident students prefer CS and IT related courses. However, just increasing seats in these streams may work as a short term solution. Which is why the following methods can be considered as better alternatives:

• Increasing Seats in the CS and IT Courses: This has to be done in moderation. Too many seats in CSE and related courses may work in the short run but will lead to too many qualified candidates with not enough opportunity for all.
• Introducing New Courses and Specialisations: Since CS and IT related courses see a rise in demand and enrollment, the next logical step can be the introduction of new courses offering various specialisations like AI, ML, DS, Cloud computing and others.
• Redeveloping the Core Branches by Offering Specialisations: The core branches alone may offer only a limited scope. Supplementing it with the right specialisations will ensure they remain relevant and optimised for the industry needs.