Following last year's trend, JEE topper leaves IIT to join MIT, citing better opportunities overseas
Devesh Bhaiya, who secured All India Rank 8 in
JEE Advanced 2025
, has chosen to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States instead of joining any of the Indian Institutes of Technology. Devesh is following a growing trend among India's top engineering talent opting for international universities, especially
MIT
, a TOI report stated.
Not the first to make the shift
Last year's
JEE Advanced topper
, Ved Lahoti, who scored 352 out of 360 — the highest in recent years — is also leaving
IIT Bombay
after one year to join MIT on a fully funded scholarship. In earlier years, students like Chirag Falor (JEE 2020) and Chitraang Murdia (JEE 2014) made similar decisions. Murdia spent a year at IIT Bombay before moving to MIT and later completed his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.
"It seems like MIT trusts the rigour of JEE Advanced and the promise of our Olympiad stars," said Prof Vijay Singh, former professor at IIT Kanpur and retired faculty at the Homi Bhabha Centre for Science Education.
Olympiad medals open global doors
Devesh Bhaiya has an academic record beyond the JEE rank. He has won three gold medals — two at the International Junior Science Olympiad (2021, 2022) and one at the International Chemistry Olympiad in 2024. He also received the Bal Shakti Puraskar in 2020. At the age of 12, he authored a paper on light pollution.
Though Devesh had already secured admission to MIT in March 2025, he still took the JEE Advanced exam as a backup option.
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A growing list of students transferring
Ved Lahoti said, 'I'm fully satisfied with IIT Bombay. But it lags in research. Globally, it's not even in the top 100. So, I applied to MIT — and when it came through, I took it. A lot of students have taken transfer to MIT and when I asked them, they said the transfer was truly worth it.'
Several other top rankers have taken the same route. Nishank Abhangi spent a year at IIT Bombay in 2019–2020 before moving to MIT. Mahit Gadhewala, who secured All India Rank 9 in 2022, also transferred after one year at IIT Bombay.
According to Prof Singh, the first student to set this trend was Raghu Mahajan. He studied at IIT Delhi for a year, moved to MIT, completed his PhD at Stanford, and is currently spending a year at the International Centre for Theoretical Sciences in Bengaluru. "He was very committed to coming back to India," said Prof Singh.
Ved Lahoti expressed a similar sentiment: "I have no plans to settle in the USA."
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(The article was originally published in TOI)
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