Andhra Pradesh student makes it to IIT under sports excellence admission programme

Visakhapatnam: Vangala Vedavachan Reddy from Andhra Pradesh has been offered a seat at IIT-Madras (IITM) under the ‘sports excellence admission' category. He is one of five athletes to be selected under the SEA quota at IITM, which is the first IIT in the country to introduce a separate admission category for sportspersons by offering supernumerary seats starting this academic year.

Reddy, who has been admitted to BTech (artificial intelligence and data science) programme, has won bronze and silver medals in different national lawn tennis competitions.

According to IITM officials, the admission process for SEA is based on JEE scores. Candidates also need to qualify for JEE (Advanced). However, the admission is not conducted through the joint seat allocation authority (JoSAA) but through a separate portal operated by IITM.

Vedavachan said he got into lawn tennis purely by chance. "I started playing just to pass time in my childhood. As I continued playing, I became motivated and began competing in matches. I qualified for the state championships twice and later for the national championships as well. In 2018, the nationals were held in Chennai, where I won a silver medal," he said.

In 2023, at the nationals in Indore, he won a bronze. "I exchanged knowledge with my friends during group studies and saved time for sports. Both cracking the JEE and winning a sports medal are challenging in their own ways. Cracking the JEE requires consistent study, while winning a medal requires physical and mental toughness, as well as skill," he explained.

Prof Mahesh Panchagnula, who heads the Centre of Excellence in Sports Science and Analytics at IITM, said the SEA programme was conceptualised about two years ago. "After a lot of deliberations internally and with various stakeholders, the institute admitted the first cohort of SEA students in July 2024 to our undergraduate programmes. We had several applications but finally, we were able to admit five students of excellent standing who were also academically qualified. They have passed JEE (Advanced), like any other IIT student. In that sense, there is no compromise on the relative quality of academic merit that is expected. But at the same time, it rewards sports pursuit and excellence," he said.

To be eligible for admission through the SEA programme, candidates must have secured a position in the common rank list or category-wise rank list in the JEE (Advanced) and must have won at least one medal in any national or international-level sports competition in the last four years.

A separate ‘sports rank list' is prepared based on the total score obtained by the candidates based on their performance in a specific list of sports. The seat allotment is done based on this list.

The initiative is offered through two supernumerary seats in each of IITM's undergraduate programmes for Indian nationals, of which one is exclusively for female students. IITM officials said the initiative is meant to recognise and reward talented students who also excel in sports.