JEE Advanced: IIT’s not a man’s world anymore, Pune girl topper proves

Chaitrali Duse, has been nurturing her passion for piano for the past seven years, but the last two years have been difficult.

For IIT JEE preparations, her piano passion had to take a backstep, she said. But, all that paid off, as Chaitrali became the female topper in Pune in IIT JEE, with a score of 290.

On cloud nine with joy, Chaitrali said her victory is over a big stereotype.“It is a huge thing for me, especially because they consider IIT to be a men’s domain. Even my teachers use to say that they have never seen girls at this level. But I want to change that perception of engineering being associated with only men, for which I had to break the first stereotype,” said Duse. She hopes more girls to come forward and take up such courses.

Adding to it, she said the stereotype around women being bad at mathematics, bothers her. Duse said, “Initially, even I had developed a mental block, and somehow I wasn’t scoring well in Maths, as compared to the other subjects. But, I worked more towards it, as I had to break my own conditioning, the stereotype I had created for myself to change the perception of the people around me. And, with the help of my teachers and parents, I did so.” She scored the highest in mathematics,with 103 among all other subjects.

Her hard work has paid off, but she said this wouldn’t have been possible without the support of her parents. “Girls are expected to do a lot of things, which includes helping out your mother at home, etc. But, for these two years I have been in a mess and it was always my mom who cleared it for me, without saying a word. She took care of literally everything,” she added.

Further, being the daughter of an IIT rank holder, Duse said her father’s rank never bothered her, nor was she pressurized to attain it. “I was never reminded of my father’s rank at home. I got to know of it from others. So it never bothered me, but I still outdid him on scores!” exclaimed Duse.