Hyderabad: With MBBS admissions and counselling for agriculture, horticulture, and veterinary courses now running in parallel, students from the BPC stream in Telangana find themselves in a bind – caught between two career tracks and forced to make high-stakes decisions without the full picture.
The Telangana State EAPCET counselling for agriculture-related courses is already underway, even as many students wait anxiously for their NEET results and medical seat allotments. Applications have been accepted, but the response has been lukewarm. So much so that PJTSAU (Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University) decided to push the deadline from June 27 to July 18. The plan is to start seat allotments by the end of the month.
Complicating matters, the NEET-based MBBS counselling calendar just dropped. For the All India Quota, Deemed, and Central Universities, the first round runs July 21–30, followed by rounds in August and early September. State quota rounds for MBBS and BDS start a bit later—first round from July 30 to August 6, then again in mid and late August.
The overlap is where it gets tricky. Students hoping for a medical seat might have to lock in a decision on an agri seat before they even know how they fared in NEET counselling. If the agriculture allotments wrap up early and a student doesn’t land a medical seat later, they’re left with no fallback.
Parents aren’t thrilled. Many are already raising red flags with the state government, worried their kids might lose out because of the scheduling clash. There’s growing pressure on officials to either coordinate the timelines or delay agriculture seat allotments until medical counselling rounds play out.