Kota produces JEE Advanced AIR 1 for third straight year; coaching admissions rise 20–25%

Jaipur: Shubham Kumar’s AIR 1 in JEE Advanced 2026 marks the third consecutive year the top rank has gone to a student who prepared in Kota, following Ved Lahoti of Indore (2024) and Rajit Gupta of Kota (2025). Kumar is a native of Gaya in Bihar.

Local hostel and mess associations said that the results have helped gain confidence among parents to send their children to the city for coaching for competitive exams like JEE and NEET. They said that an increase of nearly 20%-25% in admissions has been recorded this year, signalling a rebound after a post-pandemic decline in student numbers in the city.

After the pandemic, Kota welcomed around 2,00,000 students in 2022. Subsequently, this figure saw a decline, dropping to 1,60,000 students in 2023. The numbers fell further to 1,45,000 in 2024, and by 2025, Kota hosted around 1,25,000 students. This year, however, an upward trend in these numbers is being observed again.

Naveen Mittal, president, Kota Hostel Association, said, “There was a time when Kota faced some setbacks, but with results of the past few years, there is a strong resurgence of interest and attraction among students toward the coaching hub. People have realised that while every major coaching institute has centres across India, the specific infrastructure for academics and accommodation available in Kota is exceptional.”

Locals attributed the resurgence to primarily three reasons: affordable accommodation as per needs of students, with infrastructure to accommodate over 2 lakh students; consistent and quality performance in the IIT-JEE and NEET-UG, with one in every four students admitted to IITs studying from Kota; and an academic ecosystem that serves to motivate students and foster a strong drive to study along with national-level competition.

The Kota Hostel Association also said that facilities like tracking students’ attendance at night and in the morning have started, along with attendance for meals. If any student misses a particular meal, whether breakfast, lunch or dinner, hostel or mess staff check with the student to see if he or she is unwell.

Sarita Jain, mother of AIR 8 Kanishk Jain, who studied in Kota almost two decades ago before she got into MNIT Jaipur, said, “When Kanishk wanted to pursue engineering and we came to Kota from Pune, we saw that the city upgraded its facilities and the quality of education remained the same, which cannot be matched anywhere else.”