KCET Round 1 vs Round 2

Every candidate holding a Round 1 allotment faces the same choice: accept it, or hold out for something better in Round 2. Advice on this is usually anecdotal. It does not have to be — both rounds are published, and matching a seat across them shows exactly what happened.

Across 1,139 General Merit seats that appear in both rounds, 97% closed at a looser rank in Round 2, meaning a candidate further down the list got in. That is the case for waiting.

The case against is the third number. 55 seats appear in Round 1 and not in Round 2 at all — nothing was allotted there in the later round. For anyone holding one of those, waiting gained nothing, because the seat was already gone.

Which of the two applies to you depends entirely on the branch and college you are holding, which is what the table below is for. This is 2025 data describing what happened that year — it is evidence, not a forecast, and KEA’s own rules on what each post-allotment choice does are on the counselling page.