It is a moment of celebration in the house of Jaipur's Mridul Agarwal who topped the JEE Advanced 2021 exam held by IIT Kharagpur earlier this month. The 18-year-old's father, Pradeep Agarwal, told Edexlive on October 15 that he is extremely proud and happy about it. Mridul has obtained 348 marks out of 360 marks. His father, who works in finance with a private company, said, "I am very happy and proud of him (Mridul) today. His academic performance has been consistent since his primary school days." 

He added that Mridul was put into Allen for engineering coaching only after Class 8. "He cleared the Allen test with a good score and managed to get a full scholarship," Agarwal said. When asked what it took for his son to crack JEE Advanced with such flying colours, he said, Mridul was never one of those children who studied for set hours. "He used to remain confident and study at his own pace and not study at all when he didn't want to," Agarwal said.  

What is moreover interesting is that Agarwal added that as parents they never nudged him towards engineering. "Engineering was his dream, I am from a finance background and my wife is a homemaker. There was never any pressure put on it." He added that Mridul has always been allowed to pursue whatever he wanted. "There was never a question of giving permission even for extracurricular activities. He did as he wished," Agarwal said.

Almost 30% of candidates who attempted the exam qualified this year. Students can access their JEE Advanced result by logging in at the jeeadv.ac.in using their registration number and dates of birth. The JEE Advanced counselling and seat allotment results will be organised by Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA), for which registration will begin on October 16. The counselling is conducted as a centralised online admission process for admission into 23 IITs, 31 NITs, IIEST Shibpur, 26 IIITs and 29 other government-funded technical institutes (other-GFTIs).