JEE Advanced 2017: I gave up cricket to concentrate on studying, says Mumbai topper

Mumbai city news: Mumbai’s Rahul Bharadwaj’s All India Rank was 20, making him the topper in the city

Emotions ran high at the Bharadwaj’s in Navy Nagar, Colaba, as their eldest son checked his results on Sunday morning. When the Joint Entrance Examination-Advanced scores were declared, Rahul Bharadwaj, 17, saw that his All India Rank was 20, making him the topper in Mumbai.

Rahul (in yellow) with his family. (HT)

“I kept my fingers crossed and hoped for a good score. I’m very happy,” said Rahul.

A student of Ramanand Arya DAV College in Bhandup, Rahul scored 88% in his HSC exam and has been preparing for the JEE for four years now. “When in Class 9, I enrolled myself into a city-based coaching institute and have been working very hard since then. In the past year, I gave up on my extra-curricular activities, including cricket and listening to music, for this,” said the teenager.

Rahul’s father works with the Indian Navy and the family shifts base every few years. “I’ve lived and studied in many parts of the country but my aim has always been to study in IIT-Bombay. I hope to bag a seat in the Computer Science department. I want to research Artificial Intelligence,” he added.