IIT-TOPPER 2008

A Bihar boy Shitikanth has topped this year’s All India Joint Entrance Examinations (JEE) conducted for admissions to the Indian Institutes of Technology -11 years after Abhinav Kumar had made Bihar proud by topping prestigious exams in 1997.Son of Dr Arun Kumar Barnwal and Dr Anita Barnwal — both medical professionals, Shitikanth has been a constant performer. An alumnus of Patna's St Michael's High School, he scored 93% in Class X and 91% in Class XII CBSE exams. For the last two years he had been staying at Kota in Rajasthan where he had joined a coaching institute.He said that his favourite subject is Physics followed by Mathematics.But Chemistry, particularly Inorganic Chemistry, is a tough subject for him.Shitikanth did his class 10 from St Michael School in Patna.He went Kota in Rajasthan to prepare for IIT. Shitikanth would receive gold medal from Chief Justice of India for being topper in National Science Olympiad on June 1.Of the 3,11,258 candidates who appeared in the examination conducted on April 13, 8,652 candidates have been declared qualified to seek admission in the 6,872 seats in IITs at Chennai, Delhi, Guwahati, Kanpur, Kharagpur, Mumbai, Roorkee and some proposed new IITs, Institute of Technology-Banaras Hindu University and Indian School of Mines University, Dhanbad.admissions to three more new IITs in Punjab, Gujarat and Orissa, other than at Hyderabad, Patna and Rajasthan, for the academic session 2008-09 are likely to be made through JEE-2008.From the Delhi zone, 51, 373 candidates appeared in the exam and 1, 549 qualified for admission. Nikhil Garg has topped the Delhi zone with an All-India sixth rank.This year 78,159 girls appeared for the JEE 2008 and 840 of them were able to crack it. The number of girl candidates qualifying the exam has increased by 43 per cent since last year.N. Vasuki from the Madras zone has topped the list of girl candidates, having secured an All-India 14th rank.This year, 72,116 OBC candidates appeared in JEE, of which 1,134 have qualified.Of the 28,393 candidates from the Scheduled Castes, 690 have qualified, whereas of the 8,514 examinees from the Scheduled Tribes’ category, 159 have cleared it.Twenty candidates with certified physical disabilities will be granted admission with relaxed norms.The examination was conducted at more than 600 centres across the country. For the first time, a JEE centre had been opened outside India at Dubai.Counselling for admission begins on June 17 for the declared All-India rank holders. Courses allocated to the successful candidates will be declared on June 30.Nishant Totla of Aurangabad secured second all india rank.Totla is still unsure of which IIT to opt for. Keen on doing a PhD in theoretical Physics or Mathematics, Totla considers IIT Kanpur and IIT Bombay as the ideal options.Mumbai topper Pritish Kamat too wants to pursue research.Pritish wants to take up either computer science or electrical engineering.This former student of Ruia stays with his mother, his aunt and his grandmother. Pritish lost his father when he was nine.Both Totla and Shitikanth have qualified for the International Physics Olympiad to be held at Vietnam in July.The number of students appearing for IIT JEE this year was 28 per cent more than in 2007.Nikhil Garg has topped IIT JEE from Delhi Zone.his father is a pathologist and his elder brother is studying MBBS from Safdarjung Hospital.Nikhil wants to pursue Computer engineering at IIT Delhi. He had scored 89.2% in the class XII CBSE Board