Students from the UAE have performed exceedingly well in India’s Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) Main with one scoring in the 99.72 percentile. Considered one of the toughest exams in the world, the JEE is a standardized test that gives its applicants the opportunity to get into some of the premiere educational institutions in India.
Aryan Muralidharan, who scored in the 99.72 percentile, is one of the top scorers in the region and is hoping to get into a college of his choice. “I want to study computer science,” he said. “With these results, I am happy that I will get the course of my choice in one of the National Institute of Technology (NIT). Right now I am focusing on preparing for the JEE Advanced. If I am able to get a good rank, I would love to study at the IIT Chennai. My plan B is NIT Surathkal.”
The JEE exams are conducted in two parts- JEE Mains and JEE Advanced. Students appearing for the JEE Mains are allowed two attempts to write it. This year over 870,000 students wrote the exam. Of these, only 224,000 students qualify to sit the JEE Advanced. Most of those who pass the JEE Advanced prefer to study at one of the 23 Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) colleges in India.
The top 30,000 students of the JEE Advanced are invited for counselling for the IITs for the 10,000 or so seats. Eventually, only 10,000 students gain entry to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology in India. The IITs are considered to be some of the finest engineering colleges in the world. Famous alumni include CEO of Alphabet Inc. Sundar Pichai, Indian billionaire NR Narayana Murthy and Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal among others.
The 17-year-old student of The Millennium School-Dubai spent over 10 hours a day studying to prepare for the competitive exam. “I used to wake up at around 7 in the morning and study till 10 at night with a lot of breaks in between,” he said. “Our teachers used to ask us to prepare in 3-hour blocks because the exam is for three hours. However I would get distracted so often I took hourly breaks. I would regularly go out to the park near my house to relax in between my studies. Also, the JEE preparations really helped me for my board exams. I didn’t have to prepare separately for it.”
Alka Malik, Managing Director of Ascentria Examinations & Tests Preparation Centre, where Aryan was trained, is delighted with the performance of her students. “Five of our students have scored above 95 percentile,” she said. “For years, students from the Middle East were not able to crack the JEE. One of the biggest reasons for this was that they were not adequately trained. In the last couple of years more students are qualifying for the exams and getting admissions into reputed institutes like IITs and AIIMS (All India Institute of Medical Sciences).”
© Khaleej Times
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