Thiruvananthapuram/Kollam/Kottayam/Kochi: S M Thariq from Kollam emerged as the top rankholder from the state in JEE which facilitates students to get admission to IITs.
The good news also is that the number of students qualifying for the Joint Entrance Examinations for admissions to IITs from the state has been increasing steadily and slowly.
Mr Thariq, a native of Ammanada from Kollam, bagged category rank 20 and general merit rank 166. Mr. Thariq a student of S.N. Trust Central School, studied the two year full-time integrated JEE course at TIME academy in Kollam.
His father Prof. Shanavas is working with the Chemistry department of the University College, Trivandrum, and mother, Mumtaz, is a teacher at the Mulankadakam High School. Thariq who was also ranked 28 in the state entrance examinations, has opted to do the Computer Science course at the Bombay IIT.
K Jayaraj, General Manager of TIME, Thiruvananthapuram Centre told Deccan Chronicle that there may not have been a very significant leap in the number of students qualifying for IIT entrance over the years. “Take the case for this year, around 17 to 20 students from our centre were ranked below 1000 in the list as per the preliminary assessment. It may go up once the complete statistics become available”, Mr Jayaraj said.
Brilliant study centre, Pala, Director B Santhosh Kumar said “We still have only 2 percent students who get placed into IITs. The rest come from states such as Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and other north Indian states”, says Mr Kumar, who is also one of directors of the Brilliant study centre.
Aravind Kanth Guptaa, centre-head, FIIT-JEE, a prominent coaching centre in Kochi said that there were 52 students in IIT-JEE Advanced this year, up from just eight last year when it first placed students for the exam after the two-year coaching. While there was just one student in the top 1000 ranks last year from the centre, it went up to a remarkable nine students this year, Mr Guptaa said.
“Kerala’s standing in earlier years was very poor and behind Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. This was because of lack of awareness among students about the elite institutions and how to crack the entrance to them. The situation will definitely get better with the setting up of IIT-Palakkad. The proliferation of coaching centres in the past two-three years too has added to the momentum,” said Guptaa.
