The Class 10 Board examinations require a lot of effort from the student to even pass the examinations. Every year, lakhs of students from all over the country give the CBSE Class 10 Board Examinations to get into the last two years of their schooling, Class 11 & Class 12, and also in an effort to get the desired stream of their choice (Arts, Commerce, or Science).

Passing the exam and getting good marks in the Class 10 Board exams is an amazing achievement in itself, but becoming the best of the best puts you in a whole other league. It definitely takes a lot of hard work & determination to get to the top of your class in terms of scoring marks in the Class 10 board examinations. But an even larger feat is getting to the list of your state’s top 100 students who score the best percentile in the board examinations, and an even larger feat is becoming one of the special toppers from all over the country.

That is exactly what Vinayak Zutshi of New Delhi achieved in the 2021 CBSE Class 10 Board examinations. The bright youngster has scored 499 marks out of 500 in the CBSE Class 10 Board examination, and his achievements do not end there! Vinayak studies in Birla Vidya Niketan, one of New Delhi’s most prestigious co-educational English-medium schools. The topper is also a 2019 Junior Science Talent Search Examination (JSTSE) scholar, another amazing feat of his is that he was one of the top 1 per cent of the Delhi state for the Indian Olympiad Qualifier for Mathematics last year in 2020, he has also secured an impressive 7 medals in the National Science Olympiad & International Math Olympiad combined. So he does indeed have a very impressive academic record preceding his 2021 Class 10 Board Exam success

In this article, we’ll be sharing the advice that the brilliant Vinayak Zutshi has to offer for aspiring students who have just enrolled themselves into Class 10 and are looking for all the help they can get to the top of the toppers list.

The Secret Strategy

• One of Vinayak’s tips for students is that they should have a strict and punctual daily schedule, and also follow it strictly. Vinayak has a pretty detailed schedule that he shared with everyone — he gets up at the early hours of 6 AM, after which he reads the morning newspaper till 7 AM, he then studies from the Social Studies subject from 7 AM t0 8:30 AM, he then has his first day of the meal (breakfast) from 8:30 AM to 9 AM, after that he goes off to school until 2:30 PM, Vinayak then comes back home and has a lunch break till 3 PM, after which he studies Mathematics for two hours till 5 PM, he also makes time for leisure & fun by going out at 5 PM and playing with his friends till 6 PM, he then gets back to work and studies Science till 8:30 PM after which he eats dinner till 9 PM, he then completes his school assignments in under an hour till 10 PM, after which he calls it a day and goes off to sleep. Vinayak emphasizes that students should take care of themselves too, and keep a healthy balance between studying and taking breaks because having breaks is important too.

• The children of today are very active on social media platforms, and Vinayak understands that. He suggests that students should completely avoid signing up for social media platforms like YouTube, Instagram, or Facebook because he believes that students will end up wasting their whole day if they get too addicted to these applications.

• Vinayak also shared one of his most important strategies, how he prepared for the exams by using different strategies for different subjects. Starting with Mathematics, Vinayak’s strategy was simple and effective, he said that he devoted two hours of his day daily to study Mathematics, he also suggests students keep on practising all the questions in the two most important books for Maths success in examinations, NCERT & RD Sharma. For Science, Vinayak suggests students study all the important chapters as well as the diagrams, charts, tables, formulas etc., and keep revising them from time to time so that it gets embedded in the student’s mind, he also suggested that students should write the answers for all Science subjects in points & also highlight the important keywords to fetch good marks in Science. As for the Language subjects (like French, German, Sanskrit), Vinayak gives pretty basic but important advice, he suggests that students should work on the basics first i.e. grammar and writing, he does so by studying at least 2-3 hours in the weekends with the use of guide books like ‘all in one’ or ‘together with’. He then talks about English, to which he suggests allotting 2-3 hours of devoted study in the weekends, he also advises buying Ryan Martin’s grammar books to perfect the grammar section of the examinations, as for the writing part, Vinayak suggests keeping on practising writing assignments like letters, invitations, speeches etc. For Social Studies, Vinayak acknowledges the lengthy chapters by suggesting students study one chapter at a time, he suggests dividing the chapter into different parts, memorizing at least 5 pages in an hour, and then with the help of a friend or parent, organizing a question asking session to retain the information, he also suggests students to keep on practising maps by buying them.

Conclusion

The road towards success is a long and bumpy road, but it is up to the person’s own determination & belief to get over the obstacles and achieve success in life. Just like that, students should also believe in themselves, work hard, practice hard, and study hard. Surely the CBSE Class 10 Syllabus PDF is huge, with over 5 subjects — Science, Maths, English, Language subjects like German & French (of your choice), and Social Studies — making up the huge syllabus, but students should remember that despite how big the syllabus is, many other toppers, like Vinayak, have proven that if they can overcome this challenge, then so can everyone.