JEE Chennai topper wants to do research

Chennai: The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on Monday announced the results of the Joint Entrance Examination (Main) in which S.Raghavan, a student of the Sri Sankara Senior Secondary School, Adyar emerged the topper in the state with a score of 317 out of 360 marks.

Raghavan aspires to become a computer science researcher for which he plans to take up computer science and engineering in IIT-Madras with a better score in JEE (Advanced), which would be held soon.

“I started preparing for JEE from class 9 and my early preparation helped me crack JEE (Main) well. I used to solve several problems chapterwise so that I could study all the chapters well. My advice to fellow students is — strengthen your concepts as you need to get concepts clear to excel in exams,” he said while speaking to Deccan Chronicle.

He dedicates his success to his parents and teachers. “My mom managed all phone calls and my dad spent a lot of time with me to help me prepare well,” Raghavan said, adding that he would prefer to study Physics if he does not get computer science at IIT.

S.Vishnuvardan, another student from the city who scored 307 marks said that he would like to study computer science engineering in NIT Trichy but had not yet decided about his plans for IIT as he needs to crack JEE (Advanced) with top scores.

Pointing out that the JEE (Advanced) cut off this year was 105 as against last year’s 115 reflects the increased difficulty level of JEE (Main) this year, Prof S. Vaidhyasubamaniam, dean (planning & development) at SASTRA University, said that the quality of enrolment would also improve in centrally funded institutions and universities like SASTRA, which admit students based on JEE (Main) scores.

“Of 1.73 lakh students who registered online, about 11,500 students have scored 105 and above,” he said. Several heads of coaching centres feel that the students’ scores had come down this year because Physics was relatively more difficult than Maths and Chemistry. Some of the Physics questions were lengthy and consumed more time for students to be able to crack them easily. So the shift in the cut off being lower by 10 points can be attributed to Physics questions being tougher and in a lower magnitude to the Mathematics paper.