Maharashtra ranks 3rd as more IIT aspirants qualify in JEE (A)

MUMBAI: Maharashtra made it to the third position this year in sending the maximum number of candidates- 3,036 - through JEE (Advanced) into Indian Institutes of Technology, pushing coaching hubs Andhra Pradesh (2,241 candidates) to the fourth spot and Telangana (2,152) to fifth place.
Uttar Pradesh, with its largest population of class XII passouts, stood at the top spot with 3,864 qualified candidates and Rajasthan a close second with 3,339 candidates. However, the disparity between the successful states and the ones that are seeing fewer candidates get shortlisted, remains with the top five contributing more than 14,632, or 36%, candidates who have qualified the entrance test for IITs.
"The entire focus has shifted to smaller towns where there is a hunger for technical education. In UP, there is a new love for professionals wherein, parents even from poor backgrounds have woken up to the benefits of quality," said Pradipto Banerjee, former IIT-Roorkee director. "From affluent centres, many children are going abroad and there's a new found love for pure sciences."
"Many CBSE students manage to crack JEE, but we see that each year, the dynamics of other state boards change," said an IIT faculty. AP, said an IIT dean, has invested heavily in education. "From schools to colleges, there is a greater em-phasis on education." Maharashtra has seen an improvement over the past five years.
However, like most years, several candidates register for JEE depending on the state where they are being coached. For instance, hundreds of students from Mumbai would register and take the exam in Rajasthan, where they were being coached. But data collected from IIT-B by TOI indicates the list of candidates who have qualified from various states. The state information is filled in by candidates while registering for JEE (Mains) as the state eligibility data would be used for admission to the NIT system during counselling.
Candidate registration/choice filling for academic programmes under JoSAA begins from Monday, 10am.