Super-30's super 24 make it to IIT

Jatinder Singh, who belongs to an extremely poor OBC family and the son of a roadside vendor, is ranked 676 in the IIT merit list.

These underprivileged students have been eating, studying and living the dream of cracking the IIT exams together in a thatched roof gurukul for the last eight months.

On Wednesday, these students assembled to thank their teacher Anand Kumar, founder of Super-30, who had been relentlessly guiding them free of cost.

Anand was, however, happy and sad. Happy because 24 out of his 30 students had cracked the IIT-JEE. Sad because six of his meritorious students missed the bus by a wafer-thin margin, as the cut-off mark this year was 229, as against 190 in 2010.
 “It gives me immense satisfaction to find that children of farmers, mechanics, clerks, truck drivers and fruit-sellers have been able to realise their dream through Super-30,” said Anand, a maths wizard, who founded the institute nine years ago.

In the very first year of its inception in 2002, 18 students had cleared the IIT, followed by 22 in the second year, 26 in the third year, 28 each in the fourth and fifth year. In 2008, 2009 and 2010, all the 30 students of Super-30 cleared the JEE. This year, however, the number of successful students came down to 24.

Anand, who has literally turned Super-30 into a factory producing IITians, said he spends Rs 3 lakh on the students’ food, stay and study materials from the income generated from Ramanujam School of Mathematics, his other coaching institute.

“Altogether, 200 students are selected out of 5,000 appearing for the screening test for Super-30. Later, 30 are picked on the basis of their performance in the mains test,” Anand told Deccan Herald.

Anand Kumar will participate in a counselling programme organised by Deccan Herald and Prajavani in Bangalore on June 5.