Harshvardhan Agarwal has attained All India Rank 6 and topped in Haryana.

For Haryana’s Harshvardhan Agarwal who got All India Rank (AIR) 6 in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Main, the target is that of JEE Advanced as he wants to join his elder brother Mannan at IIT-Bombay. Mannan had last year got rank 14 in JEE Advanced and was among the top 200 in JEE Main. While Harshvardhan has achieved a rank higher than his brother’s in Main, now he is aiming for the top 10 in Advanced, he told indianexpress.com in a telephonic interview.

The 18-year-old had also appeared for JEE in the January session when he got 99.989 percentile score which he said was not enough. “A 99.989 percentile had only got me a 100+ rank and I was not satisfied with that. Thus, I wanted to appear for Main again but the consistent postponement had me worried whether or not I would be able to join college this year,” he said.

“While I followed a strict routine during the first two months, down the line, I got bored as one can only practice until a limited amount. During the lockdown, I had started playing chess and have developed some skills in the game,” he said.

He had won a silver medal in last year’s Internal Physical Olympiad. The Haryana-lad had also represented India in the Asian Physics Olympiad last year where he got an honorary mention. While these olympiads did not prepare him for the entrance test, Aggarwal said, it helped him to meet like-minded people and increased his exposure.

For JEE Main, Agarwal said he started his preparation from class 9 onwards when he focused on reading class 11 NCERTs of physics and mathematics. Physics was his favourite subject. For Main, however, he said he had practiced only during the last two weeks while most of the time was spent in preparation for Advanced.

He joined FIITJEE coaching classes in 10th standard and said that he practiced lessons and mocks online during the pandemic which helped him sustain. Now, he aims to join IIT-Bombay and enjoy the college life, he said. Aggarwal’s father works at BSNL while his mother is a professor in commerce. He got 95.2 per cent marks in his boards.

Along with him, Divyanshu Aggarwal from Harayana’s Hisar too has scored 100 percentile marks. He, however, opted out of the September exam and has been practicing for JEE Advanced ever since. Divanshu who hails from a family of doctors had told indianexpress.com, “I love solving maths problems but my parents initially wanted me to pursue medicine. However, looking at my inclination towards the subject, they supported me”. Divyanshu will be the first engineer in his family. Divyanshu has got an AIR 3.