By IANS
Balasore : The girl who topped this year's Orissa high school certificate examination said she wanted to be a scientist like President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam.
Priyanka Das, 15, a student of district government high school at Balasore, some 200 kilometers from the state capital Bhubaneswar, topped the Class 10 examination conducted by the Orissa Board of Secondary Examination (BSE) by securing 727 marks out of 750. The results were declared Tuesday.
"Although I knew that the result will be good, I never thought I will stand first in the state," Priyanka said.
She studied for about 12 to 14 hours every day to prepare for the examination.
"I want to study in the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) and want to become a scientist like President Kalam," she told IANS.
"She has been always a good student," Priyanka's father Saktaranjan Das said.
Saktaranjan is a tax consultant while Priyanka's mother Urvashi works as a zoology lecturer in a local college.
"She got a scholarship in Class three, Class five and again in Class seven. We are proud of her," said Urvashi Das.
This year about 400,000 students from 7133 state high schools had appeared for the Class 10 examination, which had been conducted simultaneously in 1713 centres across the state between March 7 and March 16, Orissa Board of Secondary Examination secretary Minaketan Pani told IANS.