Hyderabad: The Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad continues to maintain its position as the best among the second generation of premier institutions, going by students’ preferences.

The institution is the only one, apart from the older seven IITs and IT-BHU, to receive students among the top thousand rankers in the JEE Advanced. After the first round of JoSAA counselling, 20 students in the top thousand rankers opted for the institution.

Surprisingly, seats in even the infant IIT Tirupati, IIIT Kurnool and NIT Andhra Pradesh were all filled. As usual, IIT Bombay was the top draw with as many as 515, from among the first thousand JEE Advanced rankers, bagging seats in the institution. IIT Delhi was next with 343 students among the top 1,000 rankers.

Interestingly, Computer Science was the top draw at IIT Hyderabad with all the 20 top thousand rankers opting for the branch.

While last year, the opening rank for IIT Hyderabad CSE branch was 632, it climbed to 534 this year and closed at 964, within the top 1,000.

Last year the closing rank was 1,326 (general category). Unlike last year, the top thousand rankers didn’t evince interest in the Electrical Engineering branch of IIT Hyderabad this year.

However, other branches didn’t attract as much interest from the best placed rankers.