Pune: Overall results of city students fall slightly

Durgesh Mangeshkar, director of IIT Prakashan, said the success rate of JEE coaching institutes across the country has declined this year as compared to previous years.

“It is principally because this was the first batch that underwent online coaching. When offline classes started, what we saw was that the students who were scoring exceptionally well in the tests which they took from home were faring poorly offline. Later, we found that they were switching off cameras and cheating or copying since there was no control during the online teaching mode. It was difficult to make up for lost time in physical classes. Most coaching classes may not admit it for commercial reasons but the overall success rate has dropped,” he said. At his institute, 342 students out of 623 qualified for JEE Advanced, with a 55 per cent success ratio.

Most institutes said the number of students who appeared for JEE Mains Session 2 was fewer than Session 1, or the scores would have been better.

From Prime Academy, out of nearly 150 students, 110 have qualified for JEE Advanced. Founder Lalit Kumar said the percentile in second JEE mains was relatively more challenging as 30 per cent fewer students appeared for JEE Mains 2.

“A significant chunk of these dropouts was low percentile students. For example, if 1,000 students appeared for the 1st phase of JEE Mains, then a student with 100 rank would have got 90 percentile. But in the second mains, about 300 students didn’t appear, of which just 10 were high percentile students. Effectively, the same student would have earned 87 percentile as he is 90th among 700 students,” he said.

Bakliwal Tutorials, which claimed to have Pune’s rank 1 student, Amogh Bhagwat, with an All India rank of 98, said nine students scored within AIR 1000 and 41 students scored more than 99.5 percentile.

“Most of our top students, including Pune topper Amogh Bhagwat, did not write JEE Main 2 as they decided to focus on JEE Advanced after doing well in JEE Main 1. If they would have written JEE Main 2, they would have got even better ranks. Kudos to this entire batch who prepared online almost completely for the past two years and yet did so well,” said director Vaibhav Bakliwal.

Meanwhile, as the students face another challenge in the upcoming JEE Advanced examinations, experts shared some tips.

“Students should focus on their strong topics rather than trying everything for JEE Advanced. It is a low-scoring exam with more complex problems, and even a score of as low as 40 per cent can fetch a seat in the most premium IITs,” said Lalit Kumar.