From No. 1 to 10,small towns score big in IIT entrance

If the results this year had a common thread,it was of students from small towns scoring big. Shubham Mehta from Kota was ranked second while Sumegha Garg from Bathinda in Punjab,with a 12th rank,topped among girls. “I consider that I have been successful in proving that even girls can do much better than boys. They only need to have confidence in themselves,” says Garg. Her only regret is she couldn’t equal her elder brother’s rank of six,that he got some years ago.

It took 15 long years and 17-year-old Shubham Mehta to put Kota city on the IIT toppers’ list. Though coaching centres in Rajasthan’s Kota are responsible for close to 25 per cent of the national IIT intake annually,Mehta is the first student born and brought up in Kota to secure a top three finish after 1986.

“I still remember it was Himanshu Asnani from Kota who came first in 1986,and that was what I was obviously aiming for,but this is close enough,” says Mehta,the son of a block development officer posted in Kota.

Mehta’s classmate at a coaching centre in Kota,Nishit Lahoti,followed closely with an all-India rank of five. Originally from Udaipur,Lahoti wants to pursue computer science in IIT-Powai. “Computer science is all about logic and the study of it and I know I will not only excel,but love every minute of it,” says Lahoti.

For Tanmay Vittal Randhawne who came to Kota from Koppargaon in Maharashtra,computer gaming has always been a priority and now with a tenth rank,Randhawne too plans on taking up computer science at IIT-Powai.

His parents,both lecturers in Koppargaon near Shirdi,are thrilled. “I left my job as a lecturer to go be with my son in Kota for two years and it all seems to have paid off. Since I hold a PhD in chemistry,this was one subject that was never a problem and Tanmay loves physics,so it was only mathematics he had to concentrate on,” said his mother Prathiba.

Andhra had many reasons to rejoice apart from home boy getting the top rank — the third,fourth,sixth,eight and ninth spots too were taken by students from the state in the general category,besides the state bagging the 5th and 7th ranks in the OBC category,the 8th rank in the ST category,and two 9th ranks in the Physically Handicapped and SC category respectively.

Shyamak Reddy was ranked third and Burle Sai Kiran,fourth. Ishan Anand was ranked 5th in the OBC category. Kunal Chawla was ranked all-India 6th. Anirudh V was ranked 7th in OBC category. T Bhargava Reddy was ranked 8th while J J Varun got the 9th rank.

“I followed the syllabus prepared by my teachers which is called IIT Premier League (IPL). The preparation method not only gave me lot of confidence but it also helped me secure a rank in the top 10,” says 17-year-old Bharghava who hails from Mahbubnagar and whose father is a teacher in a private school in Hyderabad. Both Bharghava and the topper Prithvi Tej are from Sri Chaitanya Junior College in Vijayawada.

Janga J Varun,the son of a stenographer in NTPC,Ramagundem,Karimnagar district,said: “I have not yet decided but computer science or chemical engineering at IIT Mumbai are the two options. Right now I am attending a 10-day training camp at Mumbai for International Chemistry Olympiad.”

Up north in western UP,Saharanpur got its first ranker in the top 60. The son of a departmental store owner,Harshit Jain,has not stopped smiling since he found he stood 55 in the entrance exam. “Papa ne mujhe phone par bataya wahaan dhoom dham mach gayi hai (My father told me over the phone that the whole town is celebrating),” says the 17-year-old.

A student of Gyan Kalash School in Sahranpur,Jain has spent the last two years scuttling between his hometown and Delhi. His two-year classroom coaching programme at FIIT-JEE’s Delhi centre was funded entirely by the institute.

— with ENS Delhi and Chandigarh