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While most of the toppers from the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) swear by the rule of staying away from social media, CBSE all India rank (AIR) 2 Pratham Kumar Shrivastava said he was “moderately active” on platforms during his class 10 examinations. He has managed to score 498 marks out of 500 among 25 others to rank second across India. He also holds top rank in Ghaziabad.
Pratham, a student of Amity International School, secured 100 marks in four subjects except for English, in which he got 98 marks. He said he is ‘weak’ in social science and English. “I was unprepared for the English exam and I think that I lost two marks in value-based questions and story writing,” he added.
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A resident of Indirapuram in Ghaziabad, the topper has already taken science, along with computers as an optional subject in class 11, and wants to follow his father’s footsteps to become a software engineer. His mother is a homemaker. Pratham has already joined coaching for Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) and wants to get admission in an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT). “My classes began from the first week of April. They have been interesting but the pressure is building up now,” he told indianexpress.com.
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Studying computers since class 8, the 16-year-old said he is interested in programming and is well-versed with web development. “I used to develop applications on MIT App Inventor, but have not got any of them published yet,” he adds. App Inventor for Android is an open-source web application, initially provided by Google, and presently maintained by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which allows computer programming enthusiasts to create software applications for Android.
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The 16-year-old said he used to study for 8-9 hours daily and did not take any coaching for his class 10 board exams. His mother, who holds a Mathematics Honours degree, used to teach him the subject.
When asked about his preparation strategy, Pratham said, “There is no date or time when I started preparing for the exams. It was a phased process.”
Pratham is an avid reader, likes watching movies and playing football. He used to play football twice or thrice a week during his board exams. To de-stress himself during exam preparations, he used to read about football.