Delhi board plus two schools 46, seats around 4,700 and Class XI aspirants over 45,000 and counting.

Welcome to Bokaro, one of the most sought-after plus two destinations for Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Bengal.

Of some 45,000 applications submitted so far to 45 CBSE schools and one ISCE institution in the city, only 13,500 are from Bokaro and the rest from other parts of the state and its neighbours, thanks to the stellar reputation of the education hubs for grooming students for competitive exams.

The most sought-after schools are Delhi Public School (DPS), Bokaro, where 142 students had got 10 CGPA in Class X this year, followed by Chinmaya School.

St Xavier's (the city's only ICSE school), Pentecostal Assembly School, Ayyappa Public School, Guru Gobind Singh Public School, MGM High School, Holy Cross School, DAV School, Bokaro Public School, Crescent Public School, Sardar Patel School, Saraswati Vidya Mandir, ARS Public School, Kendriya Vidyalaya and Bokaro Steel-run BIV schools are the other favourites.

Entrance exams are underway or lined up in the next couple of weeks. Classes in most are likely to start by June-end.

DPS director Hemlata S. Mohan said they got more applicants than last year. "We got over 12,000 applications. Last year, we received 10,000," she said. The school, which has 365-plus seats in science and 185-plus in commerce, has very few berths left after it admits its own students with superlative grades. "Many candidates try to use money power and political clout but DPS maintains transparency," Mohan said.

Chinamya School principal Ashok Kumar Singh agreed rush was more this year. "Till date we have received around 7,000 applications," he said.

Director of Pentecostal School D.N. Prasad said his was one of the few prominent schools of the city that had arts in Class XI. "While 150 seats are kept for science, 50 each are for arts and commerce. Each year we get more than 6,000 applications," said Prasad.

As schools feel the pressure to accommodate a huge rush of students, aspirants are facing the pressure of making it through top institutes.

Abhishek Kumar from Bhagalpur in Bihar, who wants a berth in DPS or Chinmaya, said he got 10 CGPA in CBSE, but didn't know what fate had in store. Asked why he wanted to study in Bokaro, he said: "Here, schools prepare students well for IIT-JEE."

Another student from Darbhanga in Bihar Swati Jha, who also got 10 CGPA, said she wanted to be a doctor and studying Plus Two in Bokaro would prepare her for a top med school.