Andhra Pradesh students proved their mettle yet again by bagging four ranks in the top-10 in the open category in the prestigious IIT-JEE results announced on Friday.

The top four, all from Narayana, are R. Nisha-nth who secured fourth rank with 373 marks out of 401, Sai Suman Jagadeesh got fifth, Anant Gu-pta seventh and P. Bharath Kumar ninth.

Sri Chaitanya students Pratheek Pramod secured 16th rank and Nikhil Sr-iram bagged 18th rank in the Open Category.

Among the toppers, Md H. Rehman bagged the all India first rank in the minority category, P. Balaji Vishal got fourth in the SC category and Ameer Hamza got sixth rank in Other Backward Classes categories. All are students of Chaitanya.

However, the state missed achieving the 'hat-trick' of a student topping the exam at the all-India level. That honour this year went to Delhi boy Arpit Agarwal who scored 385 marks out of a total of 401. The second and third ranks were bagged by students from Chandigarh and Bhilai. Interestingly, all the first three rankers were from FIIT-JEE.

AP’s haul of top ranks in IIT-JEE has also dropped this year over previous years. While six students from AP were ranked in the top 10 in each of the last two years, only four made it this year.

Many blamed the 'errors' in the IIT-JEE question papers this year for the poor show. Students lost time attempting these erroneous questions, which the IITs deleted from valuation later.

In all, 4,79,651 candidates appeared for the IIT-JEE held on April 8 across the country. About 55,000 of them were from AP. “Of the total candidates, 24,112 have secured ranks in various categories and 19,426 have been shortlisted for counselling for admission to 9,647 seats in the IITs and other institutes,” said the JEE chairman Prof. G.D. Reddy.

He said the counselling website will be open to the shortlisted candidates from Friday and they can fill up their choice of courses up to 5 pm on June 10.

IIT-JEE: State toppers eye IIT-Bombay

All the IIT-JEE toppers from the state have expressed their desire to get admission in IIT-Bombay. Most of them have preferred to pursue computer science and engineering courses.

The state topper R. Nishanth, who bagged the 4th rank in OC category, hails from Kamareddy town in Nizamabad district. “I studied for 10 hours daily on an average to crack the exam. I was expecting a rank in the top-10 and am happy that my expectations came true,” said Nishanth, who bagged 557 out of 600 marks for SSC and 934 out of 1000 marks for Inter.

Fifth ranker Sai Suman Jagadeesh hails from Nellore. “The guidance given by my teachers and the encouragement from my parents helped me achieve this feat. I wish to pursue computer science in IIT-Bombay,” said Sai Suman, who scored 535 marks for SSC and 937 marks for Inter.

Ninth ranker Bharat Kumar hails from Ongole. “It’s my dream to pursue computer science at IIT-Bombay. For that, I studied for about eight to ten hours daily,” said Kumar, who got 538 marks for SSC and 950 marks for Inter.

M. Sai Krishna Deepak, who secured the 12th rank, created a record by clearing the IIT-JEE at the age of 15. A native of Nandyal, he is also aiming for IIT-Bombay. “I skipped Class IX as I was promoted to Class X directly after finishing Class VIII. For that reason, I am one year younger than other IIT aspirants,” he said.

Second ranker in OBC category, Harinandan Teja, and 14th ranker in OC category, Sashank, also have their sights set on IIT-Bombay.