JEE Advanced 2023: As the JEE Main and Advanced exams came approaching, 17-year-old Ramesh Surya Theja, who had been preparing hard for this moment for four years, could not perform to his potential. During the mock tests, he was lagging behind many others and a small change in approach from his teachers is what, he now believes, brought him back to form. Theja, who secured AIR 2 in the JEE Advanced 2023, told indianexpress.com that when he panicked and failed to perform, his teachers let him be and that instilled confidence in him. "I was not able to score 300 out of 300 for JEE Main mock tests while many others were. Instead of putting pressure on me and constantly monitoring whether we were studying or not, our teachers let us be ourselves. They encouraged me and told me I can do it. That gave me a lot of confidence that they believe in me. I prepared hard," Theja said, dedicating the success to his teachers and family. A native of Venugopalapuram village in the Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh, Theja has been studying at Sri Chaitanya Institute at Hyderabad's Madhapur for the last five years. He scored 336 out of 360 to secure AIR 2 in the JEE Advanced exams and scored 290 out of 300 marks in JEE Main and secured rank 28. He credits his parents - R Ranesh, who works as headmaster at ZP High School in BNR Pet and mother A Krishnaveni, a physical science teacher at Z P High School, Mahadeva Mangalam. JEE Advanced 2023 | AIR 1 | AIR 3 | AIR 4 | Female topper | Overall analysis | Seat matrix | He says he was not surprised with the JEE Advanced results and expected this. “I knew I was lagging a bit in Chemistry and I worked harder on this. I told myself that thinking about the results and the future before going into an exam would affect my performance. I went in with a blank mindset and just tried to stay in the present. This worked for me,” Theja said, adding that he just wants to excel in whatever he does. His proud father Ramesh said that his son's hard work and guidance from his coaching institute, Sri Chaitanya paid off. “He works very hard and put in 12 to 13 hours every day for the last four to five years. Taking inspiration from his elder brother, he has made all of us proud today,” he said. Theja says his brother R Poorna Theja, who is currently studying BTech final year at IIT-BHU, helped him a lot by sharing his experiences whenever he panicked and felt demotivated. Theja wants to pursue BTech in Computer Science Engineering at IIT Bombay and sees himself as CEO of a multinational company in the future.
