Kota lad Rajit AIR 1, 3 more in Top 10

Jaipur: With an unmatched 42 ranks in the Top 100, Kota reaffirmed its status as the nation's popular coaching hub when the JEE-Advanced 2025 results were announced on Monday. This was the best performance since the exam adopted its current format in 2013. The city boasts of four students in the Top 10, led by top ranked Rajit Gupta (AIR 1), a local lad who brought unprecedented glory to his hometown. The others in the Top 10 — Saksham Jindal (AIR 2, Haryana), Akshat Kumar Chaurasia (AIR 6, Uttar Pradesh), and Devesh Pankaj Bhaiya (AIR 8, Maharashtra) — all studied at Allen Career Institute and shared the same classroom for two years. "Our friendship was forged in the classroom in Kota, and we're excited to continue that at IIT-Bombay. Three of us are opting for computer science at IIT-B and we're confident our scores will secure us a place," said Rajit Gupta, who is eagerly looking forward to experiencing Mumbai's monsoon. Echoing this bond, Akshat Chaurasia added, "The healthy competition among us helped us to push boundaries. We often discussed difficult topics and supported each other's learning. That camaraderie made a big difference." While Chaurasia says he'll miss the famous ‘Kota kachori', he's equally thrilled to be having ‘dabeli' and ‘vada pav' in Mumbai.The trio will miss Devesh Pankaj Bhaiya at IIT-Bombay, as he is heading to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States for his engineering studies.The celebration in Kota this year was not just about individual brilliance but also about the city reclaiming its academic dominance, especially after a relatively quiet year in 2024. Students who succeeded from Kota this year hail from across all states and Union Territories — from Kashmir to Kerala, and from Assam to Puducherry — making Kota a truly pan-India success story.Allen Career Institute, the training ground for all four Top 10 achievers, marked a second consecutive year of producing AIR 1 through its classroom program. "We are proud that 46 of our students made it to the Top 100, including 21 in the Top 50," said Nitin Kukreja, CEO, Allen Career Institute Pvt Ltd. "This marks the sixth time a student from our institute topped JEE Advanced." Past Allen toppers include Chitrang Murdia (2014), Aman Bansal (2016), Kartikeya Gupta (2019), Mridul Agarwal (2021), and Ved Lahoti (2024).Resonance Eduventures Pvt Ltd also celebrated a solid performance. "This year, 88% of our qualified students came from our classroom programs," said R K Verma, founder and MD of Resonance. "It validates our strong academic ecosystem and consistent focus on excellence."Nitin Vijay, founder and CEO of Motion Education, revealed that out of the 6,332 students from the institute who appeared for JEE-Advanced this year, 3,180 were repeat students, and of these, 1,921 qualified, achieving an impressive qualifying of 60.40% — well above the national average for repeaters.Kota erupted in celebrations as coaching centres marked the success with drumbeats and dancing, while toppers gave interviews to the national media. Festivities lit up areas like Kunadi, Mahaveer Nagar, Keshavpura, and Talwandi, with the city hopeful of a surge in student enrolments.Kota's coaching ecosystem is once again set to energise allied sectors — hostels, transport, catering, lifestyle, real estate, and stationery. Stakeholders anticipate student numbers to touch 2 lakh this season, generating direct employment for over 1.25 lakh people and supporting nearly 3 lakh more indirectly, reinforcing the city's stature as India's leading academic and coaching destination.