How to Read an INI-CET Seat Matrix

What a seat matrix lists

A seat matrix is an official table of how many seats are available, broken down by institute, specialty and category. It tells you how many people a row can admit, which is essential context for any cutoff: a closing rank from a row with one seat means something very different from a row with ten.

Session matrices and round matrices

Documents can publish seats at two levels:

• a session-level matrix, listing the seats offered for the session;
• a round matrix, listing the seats available in a particular counselling round, for example after earlier rounds have filled some.

The Seat Matrix Explorer keeps each published matrix separate and lets you choose which one you are looking at. A newer matrix is added alongside older ones; nothing is overwritten.

Categories, PwBD and seat types

• Category columns show seats for each category separately. They are counts, not percentages.
• PwBD seats are shown in their own columns, next to the category they belong to.
• Seat type appears where a document lists separate seat pools. Each pool is its own row, with the label exactly as printed.

Unpublished counts and totals

Sometimes a document leaves a count blank or illegible. This site records it as Not available and never fills it in. A dash (“—”) means the matrix has no entry for that category at all, which is different from a published zero.

Because a missing count could be any number, a total that would include it is not shown. You will see “Not available” with the number of missing counts instead.

Comparing matrices

To see how seats changed, compare the same institute and specialty in two matrices side by side rather than adding them. The institute and specialty views of the Seat Matrix Explorer list every published matrix, with a total only where the matrix was complete.

Read seat counts together with past closing ranks. How to read INI-CET cutoffs explains why rows with very few seats have the least predictable cutoffs.