Who got into the IITs this year

As per statistics shared by IIT Guwahati, maximum number of students were admitted through this years' JEE-Advanced 2016 from Rajasthan with 1646 students. Rajasthan led the table in JEE-Advanced 2015 as well with 1965 students.  UP and Maharashtra came next with their share of admitted candidates at 1458 and 974.  Delhi was 10th this year with its share of 362 admitted candidates as against 8th in the table in 2015.  The dominance of Rajasthan could well be attributed to the coaching industry operating out of places like Kota. 

Education Board analysis
The analysis further shared board-wise data of admitted candidates. This year 58% of the candidates admitted (5849 candidates) were from CBSE board as against 60% last year.  Next was Telangana board with 9% candidates (888 candidates) and Rajasthan board candidates (768 candidates) constituted 7.6% of the overall admits.  

Coaching vs. Self-Study
The data also threw up some interesting aspects.  Nearly 52% of students who got admitted into IITs did NOT depend on external coaching and relied on self-study.  

A sobering fact was that the present selection mechanism is predominantly suited for candidates from urban areas - 75% of successful students who made it this year were from urban areas.  This brings out an uncomfortable question - are our higher education selection processes skewed leaving children from rural areas at a major disadvantage when it comes to getting admistted to our top institutes?   With 70% of our country's students studying in rural bastions today, how are we ensuring that in the coming years they are given a fair opportunity to compete and enrol into our premier institutes  like IITs?  

Author: Neelesh Budhiraja