Pondicherry School gives 11 IITians and Shines Again This Year !
23 students from Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya in Puducherry, Pondicherry, had appeared for the JEE (Main) examinations, of which 21 qualified for the JEE (Advanced) examinations. 11out of these 21 students of JNV, who underwent two-year intensive coaching for the IIT-JEE, passed the competitive exam. All this, owing to the free coaching by and NGO called 'Avanti Fellows', formed by two former IITians, which extends free coaching to help meritorious students from underprivileged backgrounds to crack these competitive exams.
Vedant Somani claimed 319th rank at the national- level, while five more students claimed ranks below 5,000, and yet another five students claimed ranks below 10,000. This is the second time in a row when the government school has fared well in the competitive exam. In 2013, 16 of 17 students cleared the main exam, further out of which, seven cleared the advanced exams, and joined prestigious institutions in the country, commented JNV principal A. Vinayathan.
Vedant who as of now is on a personal visit to Jaipur feels on the top of the world since his results are out. "I want to join computer science engineering in one of the IITs, Bombay, Delhi or Madras. I plan to put immediate focus on my graduate course and perform well in it. My long term goal is to do MBA after IIT”, said Vedant.
But, at the same time, he has decided to keep all the options open. Vedant is the son of an insurance agent Manoj Somani in Andhra Pradesh.
Though he aspired to secure a rank below 250 in the country, but still he is happy nevertheless. He said, "However at the end of the day I am happy. At times, you fall short of your expectations. The policy is not to lose hope or not to stay over-confident. But, to put maximum efforts and accept the results without any complaint" he said. Vedant was all praise for the NGO team. He added, "Avanti Fellows staffs are good people with great commitment.
Pratyusha Kumar Chayani, the son of farmer Pradyumna Kishore Chayani from Odisha, has secured 4,769th rank at the national- level. Since he is interested in genetic engineering, Pratyusha aspires to join biochemical engineering at IIT Kharagpur. He too attributed his success to Avanti Fellows, his school teachers and his role model and teacher Ravindra Kumar Lenka in Odisha.
Avanti Fellows is founded by two IITians named Akshay Saxena and Krishna Ramkumar. They select meritorious students from rural and poor background after assessing their performances in baseline tests and extend them training to clear the competitive exams. Commencing its operations in New Delhi, this NGO later extended its base to JNV in Puducherry in 2011. Avanti Fellow's program associate in Puducherry JNV learning center K Jyothsna said, "We extend two years intensive training to the selected students using VSAT online facility. Many experienced teaching faculty members from various parts of the country train the students to successfully prepare for the examinations. The students can clarify their doubts online using an exclusive application SAS".
The NGO also involves students of IITs to share their success mantra to aspiring candidates. IIT students will play the role of mentors to aspiring candidates. "Mentors visit JNV on weekends and take special classes", added she. The NGO which launched training programmes in a JNV at Mangalore in Karnataka a couple of days ago will now soon launch their operations at a JNV at Bolangir in Orissa soon.