Kota's forgotten students: What happens when you don't crack JEE Advanced

The coaching centres of Rajasthan's Kota, often dubbed India's coaching capital, claimed four of the top ten ranks in the JEE Advanced results announced last week. As photos of the toppers flood city banners and the media celebrates them with interviews, a large section of city's students — those who didn't make it through the country's toughest engineering entrance exam — are left crestfallen, confused and conflicted.
The Hindu spoke to three generations of Kota students who couldn't realise the IIT dream, to understand how life unfolded for them beyond the JEE ranks.
For K. Seema, who gave up her passion for writing short stories to devote herself entirely to the exam this year, it was a rude shock to find she missed the cut-off by two marks. A native of Jaipur, she lived in a hostel affiliated with her coaching centre in Kota. Her performance at the weekly tests were so good that she started dreaming of a settled life in half a decade. 'It was the only way out for our family to escape poverty. My parents are blue-collared workers, and as a family, we firmly believed that an IIT seat and a good job would help us move up the economic ladder,' she said.
There are options — going to IIIT, MIT or even taking a gap year, often called the '13th batch' in Kota dictionary. But confused and derailed by the near miss, students like Seema slip into a state of despair. Seema has not been answering the calls from her friends and relatives and is currently uncertain about her future. 'Should I try again this year for a rank or settle for a private engineering college in Jaipur? What if I don't get it next year? I would have wasted lakhs of money for my family, who saved it by sacrificing their basic needs,' she said.
On average, 15–20% of JEE–Advanced qualifiers in recent years have reportedly trained in Kota. Though many who don't make it fall into despair and take years to recover, some do see the positives in the intense training and dedication they learned here.
If present trends are any indication, however, Kota culture may have run its course. According to industry experts, student enrolment in Kota fell sharply in 2024, with numbers ranging between 85,000 and 1 lakh. This marked a significant decline from the usual annual intake of 2 to 2.5 lakh students in previous years. The reason is largely attributed to the charged ecosystem and what it does to students, especially ones who don't make the cut in JEE Advanced and Mains.
Beyond the IIT dream
In Kota, for every student who cracks the JEE, there are dozens who don't. Behind the banners of toppers and celebration lies a quieter, heavier reality—of far more students grappling with disappointment than with success. In a city obsessed with ranks, the struggles of those who didn't make it remain unheard and unseen.
Alumni of these coaching centres who didn't crack the exam know there's a world beyond the IIT dream. Having internalised discipline and grit during their time in Kota, many have upskilled through college and work and some have gone on to outshine even the IITians.
Nishant Soni stayed away from playing keyboard for two years when he was studying for more than ten hours a day to crack the JEE exam in 2012. 'I joined the coaching centre in 2010 with a dream of becoming an IITian as my father is a professor in Physics. I have been exposed to an educational upbringing and I wanted to honour him,' Nishant said.
When he got a rank of 1.2 lakh, he was so demotivated that he did not want to talk to anyone. He received no support from the coaching centre and the professors, as they were busy celebrating the toppers. 'They are focussed on their marketing with successful students. Coaching centres do not bat an eye to the students who do not make it,' Nishant added.
These coaching centres, however, helped Nishant build discipline and understand the true value of hard work; he is now working as a Senior DevOps Engineer and consultant in a Canadian multinational company named Telus. 'I reconciled to the idea that it is not my potential to get into an IIT. Everyone is not meant to crack IIT,' he said, adding, 'Cracking IIT is not the only way to become successful. Though mediocre in my academics throughout my life , I am earning almost equal to what IITians are earning today. So the whole point is to become successful in life and not just successful in cracking an exam.'
In reality, many of these students succeed. 'Many students who didn't crack the exams come back after a few years having found meaningful careers in completely different fields – film, entrepreneurship, teaching, design, public service and more. They talk about how stepping away from the rigid coaching system helped them rediscover their real interests. But unfortunately, these stories are rarely highlighted because they don't fit the conventional definition of success,' Dr Ghasi Ram Choudhary, former Head of the Political Science Department at Government College, University of Rajasthan, said.
The blame game
Rahul Sharma, another Kota product who gave the exam twice, 25 years ago, says that the coaching centres always project the JEE as a do or die situation. 'In the second attempt, I secured 4,600th rank. But, at that time, there were only 3,000 positions and I did not make it to IIT,' Rahul Sharma, who has launched a tech startup, said.
A native of Kota, he was under the pressure from his childhood to bag the rank. His days would start with going to the school and end with finishing the assignments given by the coaching centres. 'For more than 12 hours a day, we would study. Even CBSE schools in Kota were not strict; they used to allow us to go to coaching centres from the afternoon. Basically, students would choose such schools,' Rahul said.
When he found out he did not make it even in the second attempt, Rahul Sharma was heartbroken. 'You feel the sting when toppers are celebrated. I have put in all my efforts and no one appreciated it,' Rahul said.
Empathy from coaching centres
A scientific paper titled EPH270 Kota: The Emerging Suicide City of India said that the culture of competition has been generating excessive stress and anxiety among students, proving detrimental to their mental health. 'Recent statistics reveal that the suicide rate among coaching students is on rise with 32 suicides officially recorded in 2023 and 17 suicides officially recorded in Kota till May 2024,' the paper said, adding that the coaching institutes are developing effective counseling module/intervention strategy for students to overcome stress and stop resorting to suicide.
Institutes such as Allen Career Institute, Resonance, and Motion have collaborated with platforms like YourDOST to provide counseling to students. 'After the Rajasthan government issued guidelines a year and a half ago, most centres appointed therapists—something that was earlier handled by teachers. There is one therapist for every 500–600 students in our institute. We also offer regular motivational sessions to support students, and every teacher acts as a mentor for a batch of about forty students, who can reach out to her to share any of their problems,' said a faculty member from a reputed coaching centre, seeking anonymity.
Then, why are students still dying by suicide? In May 2025, the Supreme Court sharply reprimanded the Rajasthan government and Kota police, asking, 'Why are these children dying by suicide, and only in Kota?' — describing the situation as 'serious' and demanding accountability for the rising student deaths.
Coaching centres attribute the suicides to constant pressure from families, peers, and society. 'Most of the pressure comes from parents, and it's very negative. Many of them come from humble backgrounds. In the advanced batch, which is segregated with the cream of intelligent students, 90 percent make it to IIT. However, in the bottom-tier batches, none of them do. Yet they come here and spend two years only to succumb to parental pressure,' the faculty member added.
However, such measures in Kota are too little, too late. In most of the centres, teachers are hired and trained for their academic knowledge, not for their ability to offer emotional support or career advice. 'Students are not encouraged to talk about failure or alternatives beyond engineering and medicine. These conversations are either avoided or treated as distractions. There's a pressing need to train educators to engage with students more holistically,' says Dr Ghasi Ram Choudhary.
Nishant, however, gives the parting shot. He says though he didn't go to an IIT, his startup employs IITians.

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