Andhra boy tops JEE-Mains exam

Vijaywada's Bhogi Suraj Krishna has topped the Joint Entrance Examination-Mains for admissions to engineering colleges across the country, with over 2.3 lakh students, including more than 50,000 girls, qualifying the test whose results were declared today by the CBSE.

The second rank in the exam conducted by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) was bagged by Hemant Kumar Chodipilli from Andhra Pradesh, while Rajasthan's Parth Laturia secured the third spot.

I was confident of my performance when the answer keys were out, but had not expected to bag the top rank, Krishna told PTI over phone from Vijaywada, adding that he wants to join IIT Bombay.

While over 11 lakh candidates had registered for the exam, a total of 10.74 lakh candidates had appeared for the test, of which 2,31,024 qualified the exam.

Among those who have cleared the exam, 1,80, 331 are boys and 50,693 girls. Besides seeking admission in various engineering colleges across India, the qualified candidates are also eligible to appear for JEE-Advanced which is an entrance test for IITs and Indian School of Mines (ISM), Dhanbad.

"The JEE question papers are prepared in original by over 100 item writers. These item writers are subject experts. They prepare over 1,500 items over a period of two months during the year of the exam.

"All these questions are prepared by the item writers in original and they are handwritten. After that, 90 questions are drawn randomly and 8-9 sets are created. Anyone set is randomly picked for use in JEE," a senior board official explained.

The exam was conducted at 1,621 centres (1,613 in India and 8 abroad) across 112 cities (104 in India and 8 abroad).

The registration process for JEE Advanced 2018 would start from May 2 and the examination is scheduled to be conducted on May 20.

This year, the CBSE board is not giving any weight to class 12 board exam marks but will rank qualifying students on the basis of their JEE Main 2018 score.

However, candidates have to show the class 12th (regular/improvement) marksheet with 75 per cent marks at the reporting centres at the time of counselling/admission in IITs/NITs/IIITs and other centrally funded technical institutions.