Chennai: To attract top rankers of the Joint Entrance Examination (JEE), the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IIT Madras) will offer demo classes, a glimpse of campus life, and organise interactions with current students for JEE aspirants and their parents on its campus on June 7 and 8. The JEE (advanced) results are expected on June 2. Further, it will organise demo sessions in other cities such as Bengaluru, Jaipur, Vijayawada, Hyderabad, Mumbai, and Delhi on June 4 and 5. There will be an online session on June 3 as well.“This year, we are aiming to diversify the choices of the top rankers as, for the past 10 years, all top 100 JEE rankers have chosen only computer science engineering. We will introduce the students to opportunities in core engineering branches such as mechanical, civil, and electrical during these interactions,” said V Kamakoti, director of IIT Madras.“Though seats in all branches are eventually filled through the Joint Seat Allocation Authority (JoSAA) counselling, we want students to pursue the branches they are interested in instead of going by the popular choice,” he added. Those interested can register on the website www.askiitm.com/demo-day. “Over the past three years, we witnessed an improvement in closing JEE ranks in many UG programmes offered by IIT Madras. We are hopeful of attracting more top rankers into diversified branches such as metallurgical and aerospace engineering,” said Prathap Haridoss, dean (academic courses), IIT Madras.Despite IIT-M being the number one ranked institute, IIT Bombay has remained the top choice among top 100 rankers for many years. IIT Madras also introduced the First Principles Teachers Award to recognise exceptional teachers at the higher secondary (pre-university) level in maths, physics, and chemistry this year.. “Usually, students trained by JEE coaching centres struggle to cope in undergraduate programmes due to rote learning. But students trained by these teachers were strong in fundamentals and understood higher-level engineering concepts well,” Kamakoti added.