Kishlay Raj gets a hug from his mother at their residence near Beldih Lake on Thursday while (above) Ayush Mukherjee savours sweet success at his Hirapur home in Dhanbad. Pictures by Bhola Prasad & Gautam Dey

Jharkhand bettered its own IIT-JEE record this time with 604 more candidates clearing the prestigious Advanced examination than last year.

Till the filing of this report on Thursday evening, when results were still trickling in, three students from the state had made it to the top 100.

Dhanbad boy Ayush Mukherjee secured an all-India JEE-Advanced rank of 40 to stake claim as Jharkhand’s topper. Not far behind were Jamshedpur’s Kishlay Raj (rank 77) and Ranchi lad Aditya Kumar (rank 84).

Son of an insurance company employee, Ayush said he was glad over his achievement, but medicine was more his dream career than engineering. “I am waiting for AIIMS results next month. I want to pursue a career in neuroscience. If I don’t make the cut at AIIMS, I will take up mechanical engineering in Delhi or Kharagpur,” said the 17-year-old DPS student.

Pride of St Thomas School, Ranchi, Aditya wants to make a career in computer science. “Maths is one of my favourite subjects,” he said.

Student of Rajendra Vidyalaya, Jamshedpur, Kishlay had expected to rank even better. “I made some silly mistakes,” said the teenager who wants to study in IIT-Mumbai.

Under the revised IIT-JEE format, the entrance test was held in two phases. On April 6, around 1.50 lakh candidates from across the country appeared for the JEE-Mains. On May 26, the short-listed 1.26 lakh took JEE-Advanced and on Thursday around 28,000 qualified for the 10,000 IIT seats.

Selection to other engineering colleges are done on the basis of a cumulative normalised score of 40 per cent of the marks scored in the Class XII and 60 per cent of that obtained in JEE-Mains.

In 2013, 4,953 aspiring techies from Jharkhand had cracked the JEE-Advanced. This year, the number is 5,557.

Of the 1,500 candidates who appeared from Ranchi, 300 cleared the test. In Jamshedpur, 160 out of 800 achieved success. And in Bokaro steel city, at least 134 made the cut.

Candidates from backward classes fared well across the state. Ujjwal Kumar, all-India OBC rank 41, said he wanted to study electronics and then appear for UPSC exam.

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