3 min readPuneJun 2, 2026 04:05 AM IST
Arohi Deshpande from Pune emerged the topper among female candidates in the Joint Entrance Examination (Advanced), results of which were announced on Monday.
Arohi, who secured an All India Rank of 77, said that the JEE (Advanced) is an emotional journey and it is difficult to stay on path.
She told The Indian Express, “JEE is not just about studying. It’s also a mental and emotional journey. It’s difficult to keep on that path, constantly studying and doing your work diligently. You will face a lot of downs. But you don’t have to feel bad or let it affect you. Many times I got low marks in practice tests, but I used them as learning opportunities.”
A big factor of support for Arohi was that her parents shifted from Pune to the coaching hub city of Kota with her after class 9, where she studied at the ALLEN Career Institute. Her father Prasad Deshpande is an IT professional and her mother Amita Deshpande is an environmental engineer, and both were able to work from home to be with their daughter.
Arohi says, “Having your family with you makes it a very familiar environment. You don’t actually feel like you are somewhere else. You are just home and you are studying. I respect my friends who stay alone here for being with themselves for like 2, 3 years. Because for me, it feels difficult to even think about that.” “My focus was never to bring a specific rank. It was always to give my best performance on that day. So, whatever rank I was going to get, I was going to be happy with it,” she said. Her goal was always to crack JEE Advanced and therefore she never prepared separately for JEE Mains. Apart from studies, Arohi likes to paint, read, and listen to music.
Earlier in JEE Mains, Arohi achieved 99.996 percentile. She also scored 96.7% in class 10 and 97.8% in the class 12 board examinations. She intends to choose the B.Tech Computer Science branch at IIT Bombay. Her family has now shifted to Hyderabad. Out of the 1,79,694 who appeared for the JEE Advanced on May 17, 56,880 candidates qualified the examination. A total of 10,107 of the qualified candidates are females. Zone-wise top female candidates are: IIT Bombay — Sanvi Patidar (Rank 158), IIT Delhi Arohi Deshpande (77), IIT Guwahati – Agrima Singh (1857), IIT Kanpur – Anushka Agrawal (859), IIT Bhubaneswar — Reddi Sai Sahithi (230), IIT Madras — Korukonda Sravya (111), and IIT Roorkee — Aashi (781).