For Dharampal Yadav, son of a poor truck driver from Bihar’s Vaishali district, this year’s IIT-JEE results came with the sweet fruit of hard work and gritty guidance.
The 18-year-old, a student at Patna’s globally renowned “Super 30” coaching centre, cracked the tough examination, ranking 1,307 in the OBC category.
A total of 13,602 students were selected from across the country for admission to the IITs, with Immadi Purudhavi Tej from the IIT-Madras zone topping the list, followed by Shubham Mehta (IIT-Bombay zone), Shyamak Reddy, Burle Sai Kiran (both IIT-Madras zone) and Nishith Lohati (IIT-Bombay zone). Sumedha Garg from the Roorkee zone topped among girls, with an all-India ranking of 12.
IIT Kanpur director Sanjay Govind Dhande said the maximum number of successful candidates were from the Bombay zone (3,336), followed by Madras zone (3,126), with the Delhi zone at third place (2,138 candidates).
As the IIT-JEE results were declared Wednesday, there were celebrations at Super 30, an institution widely respected for its free coaching to poor students. Guided by its founder, mathematics wizard Anand Kumar, it retained its shine as 24 of its 30 students cracked the IIT-JEE this year. There was a touch of disappointment in the air, though, as the past two years had seen all 30 students of Super 30 clearing the exam.
In the nine years since 2003, when Super 30 was set up with Anand Kumar and senior Bihar IPS officer Abhayanand working together for the meritorious among underprivileged students, a total of 236 students have entered the IITs through this humble institution in a grubby corner of Patna. Dr Abhayanand, a physics teacher who parted ways with Mr Kumar in 2008, also got a taste of success this year as 34 of the 91 students he was coaching cleared the IIT-JEE.
This year brought extra laurels for Super 30 as some students from Punjab and Uttar Pradesh joined it instead of going to Kota in Rajasthan, well known as a springboard to the IITs. Priyanka Sharma, daughter of a cellphone mechanic in Ludhiana, was another of Super 30’s 24 successes.
Mr Kumar, who was listed among Time magazine’s “Best of Asia” in 2010, said the failure of six of his candidates was due to the “cutoff” being raised from 190 to 229 this year. “But I am not disappointed as all these students will still make it in other prestigious examinations. Super 30’s continuing success is proof of the combined dedication of learning and teaching with an unwavering social commitment,” Mr Kumar added.