Dubai : There is no secret to coming top in tough exams, said an Indian schoolgirl in Dubai who got a perfect score in the SAT Subject Tests — an assessment required for admission to US colleges.
Supraja Balasubramanian, 16, said she only studied for an hour or two every day for two weeks before the tests in October. She "wasn't expecting" to get 100 per cent marks in Maths, Physics and Chemistry — 2,400 out of 2,400 in total.
Attention please
"You just have to pay attention in class and revise every day at home," said Balasubramanian, a grade 12 pupil of Our Own English High School. "I also got help from my younger sister; whenever I was tense, she calmed me down."
She added that if you "really want to get good grades, you need to be interested in the subject, be regular in your work and have a passion to do it right".
The tests are "appropriately difficult" and "typically, students answer only about half the questions correctly", according to the exams' administrator, the College Board in New York.
However, Balasubramanian said there was no pressure on her from her parents. "They told me, ‘It's just another exam.' So I was even happier when the results came out," she said.
A school official said the teenager also scored 100 per cent in the grade 10 exams under the Indian CBSE education system. That earned her a spot in the top 0.1 percentile.
And her exam results in grades nine through 12 have also been top at her school, where she holds the record in French (96 per cent). Oddly enough, her favourite subject — after physics — is philosophy.
"Maths and science give you a very precise perception of the world. But philosophy makes you question the things around you in an interesting way. That gives you both points of view," Balasubramanian said.
She plans to graduate in both subjects from college and wants to take up research as a career choice.
