mumbai iitbombay is the hot favourite among the brightest engineering aspirants this year again with 65 of the top 100 jee rankers opting for the powaibased institute most of them have joined the college to pursue computer sciencelike in the past few years iitdelhi is the clear second with 31 of the top 100 joining it i think students are coming here because of the perception that it is the best institute in all the rankings we are pretty high on the student perception level said iitbombay director devang khakharthis is a change from two decades ago when iitkharagpur was considered the mecca of engineering education in india and getting into iitmadras or kanpur ensured demigod status while iitbombay and delhi were still building themselves kharagpurs students occupied top positions in big firms said a former jee chairmaniitb got 201 students delhi 137 from top 500this year each of the three old institutes have got only got 50odd students from the top 500 while iitbombay got 201 and delhi 137 studentsexperts say a number of factors has been responsible for the reordering from geography to gastronomy and from placement records to what coaching classes preach to their studentswhile iitbombay has been bettering its performance over the years madras is slipping some say the food on the madras campus is not as good as in bombay or delhi but we get some of the finest students said a dean from iitmadrasinterestingly four students from the top 100 53 from the first 500 and 123 from the top 1000 are from other categories and some of them did not use the quota to join the iits said a jee chairman younger iits that used to open admissions post the 1000th rank have students with higher ranks opting for admissions for instance iithyderabad 23 in top 1000 and indore 3 were among the top pickswe have brought about a lot of academic innovations said iithyderabad director u b desai we have changed the academic structure we have adopted the fractal method wherein we have broken up the first semester into small modules with the latest development in engineering for instance electrical engineering has a course on 3d printing and also on the internet of things we are moving to a time when students can design their own curriculum added desaithe other newer iits on the block saw admissions open at lower ranks iit bhu varanasi saw 35 students from the top 1000 join its campus