Cake to online classes: Students celebrate at home

Noida/Ghaziabad: The marks may have come off a wall of the CBSE website, and not the school, but Class 12 students celebrated their success in Noida and Ghaziabad on Monday. With the Central Board of Secondary Education opting not to publish a merit list this year, there was no clamour to announce toppers.
Schools in the two districts claimed an increase in the number of students bagging 90% or more than last year, with some securing a 100 in a few subjects. “There are no merit lists this year. Overall, it has been a good year,” said Manish Agarwal, regional officer (Noida zone), CBSE.
Accessing the results, however, proved to be a task for some in the morning. “It was difficult downloading the result as the site kept crashing, but I managed finally. But, there is little time to celebrate as I am already attending classes for the entrance exams,” said Snigdha Basu, a Vishwa Bharti student who scored 99.4%.
Riddhima Sharma of Khaitan Public School in Ghaziabad would have loved to go out to celebrate, but for the weekend lockdown. “The pandemic did play spoilsport with our exams, but I am glad that I managed to score 99.6%,” she said. A trained dancer, Ridhhima is celebrating her success at home.
For many, missing the papers had been a worry. Somya Goyal of Gurukul, who got 99.2% in the humanities stream, was relieved on Monday. “Due to the pandemic, I could not appear for one paper as it was cancelled. But I am happy with my result and plan to celebrate it with a cake baked by my mother,” she said.
Like Somya, Damini Jain was also apprehensive about her result.
“I had prepared for my exams through the year and it was only in the last leg that the pandemic struck. It hampered my preparations slightly, but I am happy that I still managed to score 99.2%,” Damini said.
At Shiv Nadar, Ananya Meghani scored 99.8% in commerce. Another student, Niranjan Sundarajan, bagged 99% in science.
Many schools said they had bettered their performance. “It has been a difficult year, and yet the results have been very good,” said Vandana Sharma of Vishwa Bharati. Kamini Bhasin of DPS, Noida, said, “We achieved an aggregate of 90.4%, an increase of 0.8% than last year.”
Despite the lack of an official merit list from CBSE, most schools were quick to announce their respective toppers. Much like the other years, the high scorers were in the 90-plus range.