Mumbai's JEE Toppers Elated at their score: not far behind the national topper

The All India Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) mains, the first leg in qualifying for engineering programmes in country's topmost institutes, saw more students from the state making the grade this time.

According to data obtained from several coaching institutes, the state topper is projected to be Kapil Vaidya, a resident of Akola, who scored 335 in the entrance examination. The likely second and third toppers are from the city – Parth Kothari and Siddhant Garg – who scored 331 and 326 respectively. The topper among girls, Shalakha Kulkarni, who scored 306, is also a city resident.

While the CBSE, busy with increase in the cut-off for IIT entrance exam this year, according to the scores of JEE (Mains). Sources say the highest marks this year is 355 out of 360. According to the JEE website, the cut-off for JEE (advanced) for general category is 115 out of 360. For OBCs it is 74, for SC category it is 53 and for STs, it is 47 . preparations for the AIPMT exams on Sunday, has not put up a list of top scorers, coordinators from coaching institutes such as FITJEE, IITian's PACE and ICAD said that the highest score was projected to be 355 and the topper a resident of Jharkhand.

"At our institute alone, over 1,000 have qualified for the next level from the city. The performance of Maharashtra has improved," said Praveen Tyagi, managing director, IITian's PACE.

Kapil, the projected state topper, was drawn towards the IITs because of his love for mathematics, said his parents. "He got a 50% scholarship to study for the exam due to his performance in state and central level talent search tests," said ER Vaidya, Kapil's father.

We have to see if the top boy opts for Indian Institute of Technology Mumbai.