The Numbers Mangaluru Sent to India

10 students above 99.5 percentile. 18 in the national top 1%. 47 in the top 3%. All from a single institution of 217 students – in a Tier-2 city, that refuses to grow by compromise.

 

10 Above 99.5 %ile +100% YoY · 9x National

18 Above 99th %ile +38% YoY · 8x National

47 Above 97th %ile +44% YoY · 7x National

217 Total Students One Batch · One City

 

JEE MAIN 2026 · CFAL TOPPER   A Aditya Rao 99.96 Physics: 99.92 | Chemistry: 99.95 | Maths: 99.88

 

The Story Behind the Numbers

In JEE Main 2026, approximately 14.75 lakh unique candidates appeared across India. By mathematical definition, only 1% can reach the 99th percentile. Only 0.5% can reach 99.5. This is not an exam. It is a filter- one of the most statistically intense academic competitions in the world.

Now consider what happened in Mangaluru, Karnataka, at a single institution called CFAL – Centre for Advanced Learning. From a batch of 217 students, 10 crossed the 99.5th percentile. 18 crossed the 99th. 47 crossed the 97th. Every performance tier grew year-on-year. The topper, A Aditya Rao, scored 99.96, with all three subjects above 99.8.

These are not just good results. They are a mathematical argument. When 4.6% of a batch achieves what only 0.5% of India achieves, you are looking at a conversion rate 9 times the national average. And when every tier grows simultaneously, not just the top, you are not looking at a lucky cohort. You are looking at a system.

“Coaching optimises for a test. Education optimises the mind. When you optimise your mind, the test takes care of itself.” — Mr. Vijay Moras, Director, CFAL

Year-on-Year Growth Across Every Band

The most telling story in CFAL’s 2026 results is not any single topper’s score. It is the consistency of growth across the entire performance spectrum. A coaching factory can produce outliers. Only a genuine educational system can simultaneously lift every percentile band.

Percentile Band	JEE 2025	JEE 2026	Growth	National Rate
99.5+ percentile	5	10	+100%	0.5%
99+ percentile	13	18	+38%	1%
97+ percentile	32	47	+44%	3%
95+ percentile	50	62	+24%	5%
90+ percentile	82	94	+15%	10%

Every single band from 90+ upward grew. The 99.5+ tier doubled. The 97+ tier grew by nearly half. When an institution lifts both its ceiling and its floor simultaneously, it signals a system that is compounding in capability, not just producing isolated outliers.

The Conversion Rates That Demand Attention

Percentile numbers tell you what happened. Conversion rates tell you how improbable it was.

Band	Multiplier	CFAL Rate	National Rate
99.5+	9x	4.6% of CFAL batch	0.5% nationally
99+	8x	8.3% of CFAL batch	1% nationally
97+	7x	21.2% of CFAL batch	3% nationally
90+	4x	43.3% of CFAL batch	10% nationally

1 in every 12 CFAL students is in the national Top 1% of India. Nearly 1 in 5 is in the top 3%. In a country where 14.75 lakh students compete for these positions, those ratios are not incremental, they are structural.

Multi-Subject Mastery: The True Signature

JEE Main tests Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics simultaneously. A high aggregate can mask weakness in one subject. What distinguishes CFAL’s top performers is depth across all three. Rishon Fernandes scored 99.99 in Chemistry. Lauren Marian Patrao scored 99.94 in Mathematics. Six of the top 10 students scored above 99.5 in at least two individual subjects.

This is not coaching optimization. Coaching optimizes weak spots to maximize totals. What CFAL produces is something different: students who are genuinely strong in all three sciences simultaneously, the profile of a future scientist, not just a successful exam-taker.

The Elite Ten: 99.5+ Percentile

Among the top ~7,375 nationally out of 14.75 lakh students. Doubled year-on-year from 5 to 10.

Sl.No	Student Name	Phy	Chem	Math	Total
1	A Aditya Rao	99.9179039	99.9493613	99.8757049	99.9554993
2	Rishon Fernandes	99.8651544	99.9872646	99.6141918	99.9310789
3	Mrinal D Bhat	99.6778688	99.9033607	99.8217041	99.9048589
4	Abhhi Sannayya	99.7657027	99.9297897	99.7018034	99.8927123
5	Lauren Marian Patrao	99.674627	99.339348	99.9352302	99.8895103
6	Bhuvan Shetty	99.6282499	99.7495904	99.7325873	99.8206943
7	Meenakshi Unnithan	99.2010763	98.9735682	99.5003893	99.6130095
8	Rishabh Naik	99.3640375	99.77388	98.4705494	99.6105711
9	Mohak S Raj	99.8319803	98.9973776	98.5946014	99.5603222
10	Akshith Ram K	99.1598912	98.4071166	99.5084552	99.5030451

99th–99.49th Percentile: 8 More in the National Top 1%

Sl.No	Student Name	Phy	Chem	Math	Total
1	Sanath Sanjay Shet	98.7771718	99.3967902	99.0170493	99.4585176
2	Nireeksha N	99.0362321	99.645253	97.8622438	99.3631558
3	SWAGATH SHETTY	99.2393773	99.5661131	97.078243	99.3525652
4	IRA JAIN	97.7701984	98.6296718	99.4936728	99.2899346
5	RISHITH P	98.3743614	99.0268642	98.0821959	99.0748093
6	M Sivani	98.798969	98.495121	98.1398759	99.0423498
7	Mitali Ramesh Prabhu	99.4860884	99.0268642	93.2240085	99.0336065
8	Joshua Benedict Karkad	98.9148916	98.9102544	97.636566	99.0331406

Depth Over Volume: The CFAL Philosophy

Founded in 2004, CFAL has never chased scale. While India’s dominant coaching chains process thousands of students per batch, CFAL keeps its numbers intentionally small: 217 this year, because it holds a conviction that most of the industry quietly abandoned: that education is a relationship, not a transaction.

The institution’s philosophy is anchored in TLC values: Be Your Best, Passion & Excellence, Wisdom & Compassion, Purpose & Meaning. At CFAL, a student who moves from the 70th percentile to the 95th is celebrated alongside the student who reaches 99.96. Both are evidence of the same thing working.

This year’s results carry an additional layer of evidence. Several of CFAL’s top JEE performers also achieved consecutive national top 1% rankings in Science Olympiads (NSE 2025). Mrinal D Bhat and Akshith Ram K were shortlisted for the Indian National Astronomy Olympiad. The convergence of Olympiad excellence and JEE performance from the same students, at the same institution, is perhaps the most significant data point of all. Olympiad results cannot be gamed by coaching, they require genuine scientific understanding.

What This Means: For Parents, Educators & Indian Education

India’s JEE preparation landscape runs on one assumption: scale produces results. Send thousands of students through the same curriculum, and the tail of the distribution will produce enough toppers to justify the enterprise. CFAL’s 2026 results are a direct challenge to this assumption.

For parents in Mangaluru, the message is direct: your child does not need to relocate to Kota or join a factory of thousands to compete with India’s best. The capability to produce elite JEE results exists here and has been doing so, quietly, for over two decades.

For educators, the message is about architecture. When an institution lifts both its ceiling and its floor simultaneously; when the top grows and the middle grows and the base grows, it is not producing outliers. It is compounding systematically.

For students considering their next step: the question is not which institution has the most famous alumni. The question is which institution will develop you. The numbers suggest the answer.

CFAL JEE Main 2026 — The Full Picture

Metric	Result
Batch Size	217 students
Topper	A Aditya Rao – 99.96 (all 3 subjects above 99.8)
99.5+ percentile	10 students | 9x national rate | +100% YoY
99+ percentile	18 students | 8x national rate | +38% YoY
97+ percentile	47 students | 7x national rate | +44% YoY
90+ percentile	94 students | 4x national rate | +15% YoY
Location	Mangaluru, Karnataka — Tier-2 city
Founded	2004

These JEE results are not the goal of CFAL’s approach. They are the evidence of it.

Centre for Advanced Learning (CFAL) · Mangaluru, Karnataka · www.cfalindia.com · +91 9900520233