JEE (Advanced) Delhi topper aims higher

NEW DELHI: Harsh Kumar with the rank of 21 on the merit list was declared the Delhi state topper in the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) Advanced, the results of which were declared on Sunday. The girl topper for the exam, which is an entry to Indian Institute of Technology, was Tanishka Kabra from the IIT-Delhi zone.
IIT Bombay was the coordinating institute this year. The topper this year was RK Shishir, who scored 314 out of 360. Kabra, who is from Ahmedabad, scored 277 out of 360. Kumar had a score of 271 out of 360.
As Kumar wanted to qualify for IIT, his focus was more on JEE Advanced. In the earlier qualifying JEE Main exam, he had scored 275 out of 300 and his rank was 153.
“I have been taking coaching since Class VI. That helped me prepare well for this exam. From my foundation to the higher level, I could easily cope with it. This exam requires one to have a certain speed and accuracy, which I developed over time,” said 17-year-old Kumar, who finished his Class XII from a private school in Dwarka.
He hopes to get a seat in computer science engineering at IIT Bombay. “If I don’t get a seat there, I’m keeping my options open for IIT-Delhi and even IISC Bangalore,” said Kumar. His parents are not from an engineering background. While his mother is a homemaker, his father works overseas.
Kumar is also a National Talent Search Exam scholar and Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana Exam fellow, the exam administered by IISC. He even qualified for Junior Science Talent Search Examination and National Standard Exam in Junior Scientific.
Ever since he was in Class XI, Kumar said he devoted most of his time in preparing for the exam. He used to sleep late and get up early.
This year, Delhi zone had the maximum number of toppers at 133. However, 29 in the top 100 ranks were from IIT Bombay and Madras zone. The country is divided into seven zones. However, experts claimed compared with last year, this year’s cut-offs were low.
RL Trikha, director, FIITJEE group, said, “In the general category, the normal subject cut-off is 10% and aggregate marks cut-off is 35%. But this year the subject cut-off went down to 4.4% and aggregate cut-off to 15.28%.”
In all, 1,55,538 students appeared for the exam and 40,712 qualified in it.