IIT Bombay, Delhi top choice of JEE 2017 toppers

Mumbai: Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay has emerged as the first choice of among JEE 2017 toppers. IIT Delhi was the second most favoured engineering college.

About 65 of the top 100 JEE rankers have opted for IIT Mumbai, while 31 chose IIT Delhi.

Candidates first preference is computer science stream.

This signals a major shift in student's perception. About 20 years ago, IIT Kharagpur was the most preferred institute, followed by IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur.

"I think students are coming here because of the perception that it is the best institute. In all the rankings, we are pretty high on the student perception level," said IIT-Bombay director Devang Khakhar told TOI.

Together, the three old insitutes – IIT Kharagpur, Madras and Kanpur – managed to get just 50 students from the pool of top 500 candidates.

Several factors including placement records, academic research, geography, etc contributed to the change in perception of students.

Newer IITs that would open admissions after 1000th rank now have students with higher ranks opting for admissions. About 23 students in top 1,000 ranks joined IIT Hyderabad while 3 joined IIT Indore and 35 in IIT (BHU) Varanasi.