Early Revelation of JEE Advanced 2018 Topper Raises Questions – Sheer predictive ability or something else?

NEW DELHI, JUNE 10: The result of JEE Advanced 2018 was announced on June 10 at 9:45 AM. Amongst the celebrations (and disappointments), one student stood out and outshone all others by bringing home the highest rank in the national entrance examination. Pranav Goyal, a small town boy from Panchkula, was declared the topper of JEE Advanced 2018 with 337 marks out of the total 360. June 10 turned out to be a historical moment for him, as he was celebrated and congratulated by the nation.

After all it is an accomplishment to stand first in what is one of the toughest entrance exams in the country. The only thing that seemed wrong was that there was no surprise on who the topper was or for that matter even the top five rankers.

Days before the result was even actually announced, Pranav Goyal had already been declared as the topper of JEE Advanced 2018 by major media outlets along with other toppers from the same coaching institute. From advertisements by his coaching institute Sri Chaitanya to mentions on the forum of Quora, pictures, marks, photographs of Pranav and the other were slapped on everywhere. The questions that arises here is “How was it surely decided that Pranav and the others would turn out to be the toppers?”

On June 9, the day before the exam result was declared, videos have surfaced on You Tube of many of these toppers being interviewed with the exact ranks and scores displayed. The question that comes to mind is – where did the deluge of this accurate information come in from?

Reasons given may be many – calculation of scores using official answer keys and the predictive ability of the coaching institutes but this kind of accuracy is not possible considering that JEE Advanced is a national level examination with around 1,68,422 students who registered for the examination. Just how high is the predictive ability that declares the toppers purely on the basis of probable scores, from the large number of qualified aspirants about whom not much information is available? Not just that, the interviews and videos that were already published by media outlets announcing the topper as Pranav Goyal, shows without an iota of doubt that this information was known and raises questions about the sanctity of the results and their declaration.

There is no doubt that the toppers deserve all the glory. It’s their hard work paying off. What is to be seriously looked at is whether there is a deliberate leak or does someone have enough clout to gain this knowledge thereby setting a planned release of information at stages? What sets the sour note in this year’s JEE Advanced result declaration is the lack of surprise, the moments of genuine happiness and all those things that come in the normal course of things.