Music compositions of western classical masters Mozart and Beethoven acted as stress-buster for Prakhar Mittal, one of the four all-India CBSE class 10 toppers, who is also a trained pianist.
Prakhar said that he kept away from social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as this effects concentration.
A student of DPS Gurgaon, Prakhar scored 499 marks out of 500. It was in French that he missed the perfect score by one. His other subjects were English, Social Science, Mathematics and Science.
The other three students who secured the pole position are Rimzhim Agarwal of RP Public School, Bijnor; Nandini Garg of Scottish International School, Shamli, and Sreelakshmi G of Bhavan's Vidyalaya, Kochi.
Prakhar's father, who works with a finance firm in Gurgaon, said that his son always studied according to a plan.
"He has always been a good student and we expected a good result from him. But it was not expected that he would top the entire country. He would prepare a plan and decide that he would cover this much syllabus," he told PTI.
Prakhar's mother is a homemaker.
The teenager said, "Of course, there was a fear as I was about to appear for my first Board exams. But instead of taking pressure, I tried to be consistent and studied everyday for at least three hours. My parents never put pressure on me."
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