At a time when varsity cut-offs have hit 100, @IndianExpress tracked down a generation of Board exam toppers between 1996 & 2015 to find out the consequences of a convention that celebrates a few students every yr. 

Our 3-part deep dive: Tracking India's Toppers

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Each is a story of talent, effort & achievement. But taken together, the arcs of their lives & careers tell the story of a generation coming of age in a liberalised India. Of how some aspirations endure & some don’t; how some divides crumbled & some stay intractable.
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Over half the toppers (CBSE & CISCE) live overseas today, USA being the destination of choice.

Three of every four who are abroad are either working or pursuing higher education in USA. Others are in the UK, Australia, Singapore, China, Canada, Bangladesh and UAE
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Of those employed abroad, most work in the tech sector, followed by medicine and finance.

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A quarter of those working in the US are in Silicon Valley.

Like Rishabh Singh (34), who topped the CBSE Class 12 exam in 2004 and is now Research Scientist with Google X.

@Google is home to 11 toppers, the most in any one company!

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More than half the toppers (48 out of 86) chose engineering as their undergraduate degree -- only 12 did medicine.

Among those who studied engineering, 6 out of 10 did so at an IIT.

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Many, however, confess that an interest in engineering wasn't always the motivation behind the decision. They had internalised a societal norm (for those who did in school to study engineering) without questioning it.

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No wonder that over a quarter of the employed Board toppers, who studied engineering as their first degree, later switched tracks and are currently working in roles and sectors where their training in a core engineering branch is not directly useful.

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To be sure, none of the past toppers regrets her UG degree in engineering. However, many wish they had exposure to other professions or career counseling at that age.

In hindsight, Lekshmi V (29) feels she should have studied Commerce at UG level instead of engineering
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Of the total 86 toppers, only one belonged to the OBC category. None was Dalit or tribal, just 5 were first-generation college-goers -- all pointing to a connection between academic achievement and privilege.
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Here's the method (to the madness that played out over the last 4 months) .

Honestly, it was much harder to locate former toppers than I imagined. Not everyone is on social media, it turns out.
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A big shoutout to the kind souls who helped me track down the toppers when everything failed.

** To the office bearer of a bank union in UP who tapped his network to help locate a retired employee who is the father of an ICSE national topper

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** To the kind lady attending phone calls at @harvardmed's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Centre. She went out of her way to connect a (desperate & tired) journalist from with a staff doctor, who I suspected was the same person as the1998 ISC topper.

And many more
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Here's the link to the first part of our deep dive: https://indianexpress.com/article/express-exclusive/school-board-toppers-career-united-states-science-technology-education-7121532/

We also have a double spread today listing out who's who -- and where

Link: https://indianexpress.com/article/express-exclusive/school-toppers-cbse-icse-board-7121538/

Also, do check out the second part tomorrow.

The Gender Gap: Toppers all, but why it's advantage men

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Series edited by the brilliant @umavishnu & @rajkamaljha!

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