Mangaluru (The Hindu): Following an hour-long tense wait before his computer on Sunday, Kenrick Xavier Pinto was relieved to find that he was ranked 203 in the Joint Entrance Examination (Advanced) 2016.

“I am yet to decide on the Indian Institute of Technology where I can pursue my undergraduate course,” Mr. Pinto said, adding that he planned to become a physics researcher.

Mr. Pinto, who passed out of Class 12 from Lourdes Central School, Bejai, was among the 38 students from the Centre For Advanced Learning (CFAL), in Kuntikana, who had qualified for the JEE Advanced. As many as 54 students were trained at the CFAL for the JEE.

A native of Moodbidri, Mr. Pinto has been training at the CFAL since he was in Class 7. “It is the interaction at the institute with students who have succeeded in the JEE that pushed me to aim to get a seat in a premier educational institution,” Mr. Pinto said. He has also done well in various competitive examinations. He was ranked 2{+n}{+d}in the State in the National Talent Search Examination that earned him scholarship of Rs. 15,000 in Class 10. He has also done well in the Olympiads in Maths, Physics, Chemistry and Astronomy. With a ranking of 16 in Kishore Vaigyanik Protsahan Yojana (KVPY), Mr. Pinto was qualified for a seat in the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. He has also qualified for admission to the Indian Statistical Institute in Bengaluru and for the Chennai Mathematical Institute, Chennai. “But I want to purse my studies in an IIT. I am waiting for the IIT where I can get a seat,” he said.

Mr. Pinto is the younger of the two children of J.J. Pinto, the Principal of SNM Polytechnic in Moodbidri, and Tarina Pinto, a lecturer in the Department of Electrical Engineering, at the same institute. Mr. Pinto’s elder brother Kenneth Pinto is doing his B. Tech at the VIT University in Vellore.