Rajasthan will send the largest cohort of its students to IITs this year. It also recorded the best success rate of 15.8%: of the 13,801 Rajasthan students who registered for JEE (Advanced), 2,184 made the cut.

In absolute numbers, UP is a close second. The state saw the maximum students take JEE (Advanced)—22,860—and 2,131 candidates will go on to join the premier engineering colleges.

Maharashtra ranks third with 1,747 of its Class 12 graduates making it to the blue-chip institutes. The two southern states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and MP, which come next in the charts, will have 1,644, 1,428 and 1,038 of their students at the various IIT campuses.

Maharashtra ranks third with 1,747 of its Class 12 graduates making it to the blue-chip institutes. The two southern states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and MP, which come next in the charts, will have 1,644, 1,428 and 1,038 of their students at the various IIT campuses.

One in six IIT aspirants from Rajasthan who registered for JEE(A) will go on to join the premier engineering colleges this year. While Chandigarh’s success rate (15.7%) is a tad less than Rajasthan’s (15.8%), the latter (2,184) also has the highest number of IIT entrants this year. The desert state and the UT are followed by Gujarat (13.5%), Punjab (12.9%) and Haryana (12.9%).

A total of 1.6 lakh students had registered for JEE (A), of whom 16,635 allotted a seat

“While Rajasthan is an outlier, the data shows that most states send close to 10% students to the IITs. It reflects the rich diversity on campus and in our classrooms. It also means that students from every state have an equal opportunity to join the IITs; those succeeding are in the same proportion to those writing the test,” said IIT-Bombay director Subhasis Chaudhuri.

In case of Maharashtra, coaching class heads said not many sign up to take the JEE (A). “With many top-class state engineering colleges, not many want to take the toughest exam in this part of the world. They aspire to do well in the state CET. Also, students from Mumbai set their goals on becoming Chartered accountants and take up commerce. Several others prepare to go abroad,” said Praveen Tyagi, owner of IITians’ Pace, a coaching academy.

While many credit students’ success to coaching centres like Kota, and in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, experts said such classes have footprints across India.

The analysis is based on the states declared by the candidates at the time of registering for JEE (Main), the first filtering test that decides the eligibility of the candidates to take the tougher JEE (A). While the IITs do not have state quota and do not even ask for students for the state they originally belong to, there is a state quota in NITs and other GFTIs (government funded technical institutes) which also participate in the seat allocation process through the JoSAA. “These institutes have a state quota and hence candidates declare their state of eligibility during the form filling for JEE (Main),” explained JEE (advanced) chairman Suryanarayana Doolla.