Nearly 15 per cent of the students — 468 out of 3,100 — who wrote the JEE (Advanced) test from the State earlier this month, have qualified for the IITs. Experts said that Tamil Nadu’s performance has been much better than previous years. However, many students said they had expected a better rank based on the answer keys of IITs and predictions by coaching centres.
Unlike previous years, when most toppers chose IIT-Bombay or IIT-Delhi, this year, toppers from the city have opted for IIT- Madras, and are vacillating between electrical engineering and computer science. IIT – Madras zone, which comprises students from Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Puducherry, performed the second best after IIT-Bombay zone. There are 36 students from IIT- Madras zone in the top 100 and nearly 146 in the top 500.
The city topper though will be opting for mechanical engineering. Sooraj Narayan, who has an All India Rank of 54, was depressed after writing the JEE (advanced) exam). “I thought I had not performed well,” said the student whose passion for mechanics is reflected in the fifteen wrist watches he owns.
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V. Kannan, one of the top scorers, was hopeful about the excellent placement opportunities IITs provided for computer science graduates. “IIT graduates also get the opportunity of working in world-class companies such as Google or Facebook,” he said. While Kannan wants to opt for IIT- Madras, he is also open to Bombay and Delhi.
Another top scorer, S. Arvindakshan, who secured an All-India Rank of 91, was looking forward to studying close to home. “That is precisely why I have decided to go for electrical engineering and not computer science because IT companies have foreign work locations.” For S. Anandan, it was the possibility of continuing his music lessons that led him to stay back in the Chennai.
Nithin Ramesan, another topper, said he chose electrical engineering over computer science to “keep his placement options open in the core sector.”
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The results were supposed to be declared on June 23 but were advanced to provide more time for students to decide, said IIT- Delhi officials. The counselling for IITs will begin on June 24.
S. Rajan, student mentor at FIITJEE, said that while more students got through, there were fewer rank holders, especially in the top hundred. “But we also need to consider that the mathematics and physics papers were tough this year. Also, the technical glitches in a few places disturbed students,” he said. The centre had six students in the top hundred last year but three this year,
Quite a few students were disappointed “The predictions of coaching centres have gone completely wrong. Most of them gave us optimistic ranks, without realising the competition,” a student said. This is the first time the IITs followed a two-test pattern to select its candidates. Nearly 35,200 students in Tamil Nadu took the IIT-JEE mains in April,
Of the top 10 ranks in the country, four were bagged by students from Andhra Pradesh and others by those from Indore and Delhi.