HYDERABAD: The CBSE and ICSE school students may fare better in the Intermediate exams in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, but it is the state board students who rule the roost in the Joint Entrance Examination (Advanced) to seek admissions into premier engineering institutes across the country.

Overall across the country, Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) students dominate the JEE (Advanced) results, with 53% of the total candidates studying the central board syllabus. However, this trend reverses in the two states, where a majority of the qualified candidates come from the state board.

According to official data from IIT Madras and IIT Bombay, a total of 3,734 students from the two states qualified for the JEE (Advanced). Of these, 3,600 were state-board candidates - 2,293 from Telangana and 1,307 from Andhra Pradesh. Only a meagre 130 candidates were from CBSE schools and only four from the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education (ICSE) syllabus.

Together, Telangana students made up for 7.7% of the total candidates who qualified for the premier institutes and AP made up for 6.4%.

Experts attribute the trend to students in state board schools being exposed early to IIT coaching. "In Telangana and AP, several state board students start studying for IIT-JEE from class 6. After class 10, many students from the districts shift to Hyderabad to seek special coaching to crack IIT," said Ananda Raman, director of FIITJEE in Hyderabad.

Others believe that in CBSE and ICSE schools, the focus is more on the Intermediate exam than JEE. "Students from CBSE and ICSE schools concentrate more on the Intermediate exam. Compared to state board students, they start preparations for the competitive exam a little late. In Kendriya Vidyalayas and Navodayas, many are not even exposed to IIT coaching. Therefore, the success rate of students from CBSE and ICSE board in IIT-JEE is comparatively low," opined ANS Sankar Rao, lecturer at Narayana IIT Academy.
However, in the IIT-Madras zone, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala had higher number of JEE qualified candidates from the CBSE and ICSE boards. From the CBSE, the highest number of candidates were from Tamil Nadu (555), followed by Kerala (358) and Karnataka (309). From the ICSE board, the highest number of candidates came from Kerala with 48, followed by Tamil Nadu with 10 and Karnataka with nine.