JEE Toppers Find IIT-Bombay Quite Cool As Most Of Them Join It, IIT-Delhi Is Their Second Choice

IIT-Bombay is the hot favourite among the brightest engineering aspirants this year again with 65 of the top 100 JEE rankers opting for the Powai-based institute. Most of them have joined the college to pursue computer science.

IITB

Like in the past few years, IIT-Delhi is the clear second, with 31 of the top 100 joining it. "I think students are coming here because of the perception that it is the best institute. In all the rankings, we are pretty high on the student perception level," said IIT-Bombay director Devang Khakhar.

This is a change from two decades ago, when IIT-Kharagpur was considered the mecca of engineering education in India and getting into IIT-Madras or Kanpur ensured demi-god status. "While IIT-Bombay and Delhi were still building themselves, Kharagpur's students occupied top positions in big firms," said a former JEE chairman.

IIT-B got 201 students, Delhi 137 from top 500

This year, each of the three old institutes have got only got 50-odd students from the top 500, while IIT-Bombay got 201 and Delhi 137 students.

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Experts say a number of factors has been responsible for the reordering ¡ª from geography to gastronomy and from placement records to what coaching classes preach to their students.

While IIT-Bombay has been bettering its performance over the years, Madras is slipping.

"Some say the food on the Madras campus is not as good as in Bombay or Delhi. But we get some of the finest students," said a dean from IIT-Madras.

Interestingly, four students from the top 100, 53 from the first 500 and 123 from the top 1,000 are from other categories and some of them did not use the quota to join the IITs, said a JEE chairman.

Younger IITs that used to open admissions post the 1000th rank have students with higher ranks opting for admissions. For instance, IIT-Hyderabad (23 in top 1,000) and Indore (3) were among the top picks.

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"We have brought about a lot of academic innovations," said IIT-Hyderabad director U B Desai. "We have changed the academic structure. We have adopted the fractal method, wherein we have broken up the first semester into small modules with the latest development in engineering."

For instance, electrical engineering has a course on 3D printing and also on the Internet of Things. "We are moving to a time when students can design their own curriculum," added Desai.

The other newer IITs on the block saw admissions open at lower ranks. IIT (BHU) Varanasi saw 35 students from the top 1,000 join its campus.