New Delhi: Mridul Agarwal from Delhi zone has topped the JEE-Advanced this year by scoring the highest marks ever in the IIT entrance exam, results for which were announced on Friday.

The 17-year-old Agarwal, who plans to pursue B.Tech in Computer Science from IIT Bombay, has scored 348 out of 360 marks in the Joint Entrance Exam (JEE)-Advanced.

Agarwal, who hails from Rajasthan, had also scored 100 percentile in JEE-Main exam and shared the top rank with 17 others.

Kavya Chopra, also from Delhi zone, who became the first female to top the JEE-Main exam, has emerged as the topper in JEE-Advanced among females. She has scored 286 marks out of 360 with her overall rank being 98.

A total of 41,862 candidates have qualified in JEE-Advanced this year, of whom 6,452 are female candidates, according to officials.

This year, IIT-Kharagpur conducted the exam, which is the qualifying test for admission to the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). A total of 1,41,699 candidates had appeared in both paper 1 and 2 of JEE-Advanced.

"While 97 foreign candidates had registered for the exam only 42 of them appeared out of which seven have qualified," a senior official said.

While the JEE-Mains is conducted for admission to engineering colleges across the country, it is considered as a qualifying test for JEE-Advanced.

Starting this year, JEE-Main was conducted four times a year to offer flexibility to students and a chance to improve their scores. The first phase was held in February and the second in March.

The next phases were scheduled for April and May but those were postponed in view of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic that raged through the country affecting lakhs. The third edition was held from July 20-25, while the fourth edition was conducted from August 26 to September 2.

The ranks of the candidates were released taking into consideration the best of the four NTA scores in accordance with the policy already made.