TNEA 2026 admission process outlined; single-window system for engineering seats

chennai: the directorate of technical education has issued detailed guidelines for tamil nadu engineering admissions (tnea) 2026, outlining the selection process, sports quota norms, reservation policy, and online counselling procedures.merit-based selection and normalisationadmissions under the general category will be based on marks secured in mathematics, physics and chemistry, scaled to a total of 200 (maths: 100, physics: 50, chemistry: 50).to ensure uniformity across different education boards, a normalisation process will be applied. however, such normalised marks will not be considered for determining minimum eligibility.incase of a tie, ranking will be decided based on:mathematics marksphysics marksoptional subject markstotal marks in class xiidate of birth (senior candidate preferred)random numbersports quota: performance-based rankingadmissions under the eminent sports persons quota will be based exclusively on sports achievements.only the highest achievement per academic year will be consideredachievements from the last four academic years (2022-2026) will be taken into accounta minimum of 5 marks is required for inclusion in the rank listmarks are awarded based on level of participation:international: up to 1000 marksnational: up to 190 marksstate: up to 95 marksdistrict: up to 45 marksonly competitions conducted by recognised sports bodies will be considered. private or invitational tournaments, school zonal events, and cbse cluster competitions are excluded.reservation policyadmissions will follow the tamil nadu government's reservation structure:open competition (oc): 31%backward class (bc): 26.5%backward class muslim (bcm): 3.5%most backward class / denotified communities (mbc/dnc): 20%scheduled caste (sc): 15%scheduled caste arunthathiyars (sca): 3%scheduled tribes (st): 1%additionally, 7.5% of seats are reserved for students who studied in government schools from classes 6 to 12.