NEW DELHI: Mridul Agarwal has topped the IIT JEE-Advanced exams for the year 2021. He created history today by achieving the highest-ever percentile in the IIT entrance test.

The results of the IIT JEE Advanced exams were announced on Friday. Mridul Agarwal scored 348 out of 360 marks (96 percent) in the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE)-Advanced.

A total of 41,862 candidates have qualified in JEE-Advanced this year, of whom 6,452 are female candidates, according to officials.

Kavya Chopra from Delhi was the topper among the female candidates with 286 marks out of 360.

IIT-Kharagpur conducted the IIT exams this year, which is the qualifying test for admission to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). While the JEE-Mains is conducted for admission to engineering colleges across the country, it is considered as a qualifying test for JEE-Advanced.

Mridul’s father, Pradeep Agarwal works in the private sector and his mother Pooja is a homemaker.

Mridul's Success Mantra

Mridul’s key to cracking the exam is consistency, self-motivation, preparing a strategy to solve every problem.

Apart from the institute’s study materials and NCERT books that he used during his preparation for JEE Main he also referred to books such as Physics Galaxy by Ashish Arora, Advanced Problems in Physical Chemistry by Neeraj Kumar, Elementary Problems in Organic Chemistry by M.S. Chouhan, Problems in Inorganic Chemistry for JEE (Main and Advance) by VK Jaiswal.

For his JEE Advanced preparation, he followed books by foreign authors such as Solomon and Fryhle, LG Wade, JD Lee, Atkins, IE Irodov and Kleppner books.

He plans to join BTech in Computer Science Engineering (CSE) at IIT Bombay. His future plan is to migrate to the US for further studies and would try for either MIT or Stanford.

Mridul has balanced his study and social life. According to reports he never misses his friend's birthdays and also loves partying. He enjoys long drives with his parents and also plays table tennis or bowling with his friends' group to destress himself.