Mehak leads meritorious school students’ sweep in PSEB results

Senior Secondary Residential School of Meritorious Students, Sector 70, student Mehak Sharma scored 497/500 (99.40 per cent) in the non-medical stream to emerge as the district topper in the Punjab School Education Board (PSEB) Class XII exams, the results of which were announced today.

Her fellow non-medical students from the school, Mehakpreet Kaur and Bhawna came in second and third with 493/500 (98.60%) and 491/500 (98.20%), respectively.

Rupnagar native Mehak Sharma, 18, daughter of Pankaj Sharma, an India Post employee and mother Ritu Sharma, aims to join the Indian Air Force. “I have already cleared Mai Bhago armed forces preparatory institute written exam. Now I am waiting for interview. My brother Harshdeep Sharma, also a passout of same school, is in Indian Navy,” she said.

Classmate Mehakpreet Kaur, 16, daughter of Bahadur Singh, a photographer by profession and a resident of Bhaini Sahib in Ludhiana, meanwhile, is keen on pursuing engineering. “I relied on self study only and studied with a focus. am waiting for JEE results to decide her future course of action,” she said.

Ropar’s Bhawna, daughter of Harvilas, also has similar dreams. Bhawna and Mehak Sharma have been roommates in the hostel for past two years. As both of them belonged to neighbouring villages in Rupnagar, they developed a close friendship and have been helping each other prepare for exams.

As many as 13 students — six boys and seven girls — from the district made it to the state’s merit list. Of these, 11 were from Senior Secondary Residential School of Meritorious Students, Sector 70.

Mohali recorded an overall pass percentage of 93.07 per cent as 7,133 of the total 7,664 students cleared the exam.

Mohali is placed eighth behind Amritsar (96.29 per cent), Gurdaspur (95.84 per cent), and Pathankot (94.21 per cent) bagging the top-three spots out of 23 districts. Last year, the district had bagged the sixth spot in the state with an overall pass percentage of 95.50. The overall pass percentage of PSEB this year stood at 91 per cent.

PSEB chairperson Amarpal Singh said, “To help the students for better preparation of the examination PSEB released Model Test Papers on the website for practice. In 2025 PSEB reduced objective type questions from 40 per cent to 25 per cent. Level of difficulty of the questions in question paper was increased from 20 per cent to 30 per cent. 20-25 per cent questions were set directly from the content of the chapters and not from the exercises.”

Chandigarh