Pune boy Chirag Falor, already a student of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has topped the Joint Entrance Examination (Advanced) 2020.

qualifying aggregate marks for the JEE (Advanced) common rank list reduced to 69—a five-year low. The entrance results for the 23 were announced on Monday where the number of candidates qualifying increased to 43,204.

Falor scored 352 marks out of 396 to top the list, followed by Gangula Bhuvan Reddy and Vaibhav Raj for the AIR second and third ranks, respectively. Kanishka Mittal (AIR 17) is the topper in the female category with 315.

The IIT-Madras zone has the highest number of candidates at 28 in Top 100 ranks, followed by IIT-Bombay at 24 and IIT-Delhi 22 this year.

Falor will give up his IIT seat for his place at the MIT, online classes for which have already begun.

Falor, who has been preparing for JEE since he was in Class IX, wants to be a researcher in astrophysics and not an engineer. “I have always loved the stars, planets, etc,” he said. Looking at my love for the sky, my father bought me my first in Class VIII and I knew then that when I grow up, I would want to take up research in astrophysics,” said Falor.

Although his MIT classes started online on September 1, Chirag misses the feel of the real MIT campus and student life. “The curriculum is hectic. The first year is common to all, and in the second year, I hope to choose either mathematics or physics. Some of my professors are actually behind the detection of gravitational waves,” he said, sounding literally star-struck.

The total number of seats have increased to 16,053 this year from 13,000 in 2019. Meanwhile, Kanishka Mittal from the IIT-Roorkee zone, the girl topper, is in good company as the gender ratio is the best in five years.

While in 2016, just 847 or 18.5% of the qualified female candidates were offered seats in the IIT, 1,852 (44.3%) were offered admission in 2018, and the number increased to 2,432 (45.4%) in 2019.

“Right now, every sixth student at undergraduate level in our IIT is female,” said V Ramgopal Rao, director, IIT-Delhi.

Four foreigners have also qualified in the JEE (A), apart from 133 OCI and 16 PIO candidates. More than 60% qualified in the OCI (overseas citizen of India) category. And, 70% of the registered students of Indian origin (PIO) qualified in the exam. Last year, only 36% qualified from this category.

There were more OBC candidates who took the exam this year compared with those from the general category: 52,785 (9,349 qualified) took the exam versus 39,605 (18,028 qualified) from the open category.