Bengaluru-based Gaurab Das is among the 18 students to have secured the first rank at the all-India level in the Joint Entrance Examinations (Main), 2021, the results of which were announced on Wednesday.
As many as 44 students have got an NTA score of 100 and a tie-breaking criterion was used to allot ranks.
Although Gaurab has joined Purdue University in the U.S. to pursue Computer Engineering, he decided to fly down to India to appear for his JEE (Advanced) exam. A student of Narayana E-Techno School in Sahakar Nagar, he said writing JEE Advanced was his main goal. “I have been preparing for two years,” he said.
He said while the pandemic-induced lockdown helped him study at his own pace, he was disappointed that he could not meet his friends.
“But a lot of time in commuting was saved during the pandemic and I had all the time that I would have otherwise spent in traffic,” he added.
His mother said his teachers constantly kept him motivated and even gave regular mock tests so that he was well prepared. She said he spent ample time for studies and leisure and studied with a calm mind.
While JEE Main is a gateway for admission to undergraduate engineering programmes at the National Institutes of Technology, and several other institutions, the top 2.5 lakh ranked candidates are also eligible to appear for JEE (Advanced), which is the admission test to bag a seat in the Indian Institutes of Technology.