DOHA: Malika Dikshit, a student of DPS-Modern Indian School (DPS-MIS) from Grade 1, has made her school proud by scoring highest marks in the Gulf region among CBSE schools. She has obtained 99 percent in her class 10th exams.

“Scoring such marks would not have been possible without the encouragement and support of my teachers and parents. My teachers played a very important role in making me a topper,” said Malika. For most of her life, she has been among the top scoring in her previous classes.

“We were expecting the same performance this time as well but we did not expect her to top the schools,” said her father. “But not only she topped the school but also surprised us by scoring highest marks in the Gulf region” he added.

Malika is a prolific reader since her early childhood. The Harry Potter fan has a liking for Greek mythology, fictional novels and if it is a mystery novel she won’t miss it.

The journey of her bonding with books began at early childhood and gradually evolved into a strong love for written words. When she is not studying for exams she is reading books.

“I never had sleepless nights before exams. I always studied in advance and was consistent with my studies” added Malika saying that she was never pressured before exams.

She is a badminton lover and has played at cluster-level inter-school championship where she won bronze medal last year. On replying to question what motivated her to study hard, she said that “I like getting good grades and also fulfill expectations of my parents and teachers”.

Malika is pursuing her Grade XI at DPS- MIS. She has not yet decided on what she wants to do in future and has kept her options open. But she wants to explore the field of computer engineering in future.

One good thing that helped her to focus more is indifference to social media. At the time when kids have developed addiction for computer games and youtube and other social media apps, she doesn’t even have a facebook account. Instead she has used technology positively to her advantage.

For those who want to score like her, her advice for them is “give equal importance to all the subjects, be consistent in studies and solve previous years’ question papers,” said Malika.

Giving subject wise tips, she says that practice problem from text books, and look for more practice questions from other books and past years’ question papers. For English, her advice is to read thoroughly and practice grammar which will help students to get maximum marks.

Malika has scored 100 percent marks in Social Studies and French, 99 percent in Science, and 98 percent in Mathematics and English.