A board-exam result usually arrives wrapped in the familiar noise of percentages, cut-offs, school-wise tallies and the annual frenzy over who scored what. Aarav Vats’ marksheet carries all of that, of course. It says he scored 96.6% in the 2026 CBSE Class 10 board examinations. But it also carries another, more hard-won story than just the percentage alone can tell. Aarav, a student of Amity International School, Saket, got to this score while undergoing treatment for lymphoblastic lymphoma, a rare and aggressive form of cancer, and the months leading up to the examination were shaped by chemotherapy, physiotherapy, physical exhaustion and the far more intimate labour of learning how not to surrender to fear, alongside the all-too-natural exam anxiety.What makes Aarav’s story moving is not merely that he did well despite adversity, a phrase so overused that it often drains real suffering of its original texture. It is that he seems to have met illness with a kind of unusual steadiness, and met studies with patience, method and a quiet refusal to let a diagnosis become the single fact around which his entire young life would now be arranged. That is where the story really lives, in the temperament that carried him to that 96.6%. And that temperament, as his own account shows, was carved out of something more than grit. It was shaped by teachers who adjusted to his hours, parents who never weaponised marks, and a mind that continued, even through illness, to stay curious about the world beyond the textbook.
The diagnosis that tested, but didn’t defeat Aarav
When Aarav first learnt about his condition, the full gravity of it did not land at once. That, perhaps, is one of the strange mercies of childhood. Sometimes, the mind does not rush to catastrophise with the speed adults normally do. “When I first learnt about my condition, I didn’t think about it too much because at that time I didn’t realise how serious it was,” he says. “After about two months of chemotherapy, I read about it and told myself it wasn’t something I should be scared of. I even told my parents that I understood my condition.”This mindset seems to return again and again through his account: Absorb what is happening, do not collapse before it, and move forward one day at a time. “I kept a ‘never lose hope, never give up’ attitude,” Aarav says. “I followed what my doctors and my parents told me, and that helped me in my recovery.” He now says the experience has changed the way he looks at both life and achievement. “Now, I look at life a little differently. I feel health is more important. Studies are important too, but for me, being healthy matters more.” This line is almost deceptively simple, but it carries the force of something learnt from the body’s own trial.
A routine built around treatment, fatigue and recovery
For many students, board preparation means longer hours, stricter schedules, fewer distractions. For Aarav, it meant learning how to fit academics into a day already claimed, in large measure, by treatment. “In the morning, I used to go for chemotherapy and physiotherapy,” he says. “By the time I came home, I would be quite tired, so I would take a nap. After that, there was often another physiotherapy session.” That is not the kind of timetable from which one expects a high board score to emerge. And yet, somehow, that is precisely what happened.What helped was flexibility, accommodation and a school that appears to have understood that discipline is sometimes best protected not by rigidity, but by kindness. “My teachers were very flexible with their timings,” Aarav says. “They would take classes whenever I was available — sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, and even late at night. They cleared my doubts whenever I needed, even around 11 pm.” One can imagine the emotional effect of such availability on a child trying to keep pace with school while his body is being asked to endure far more than most children’s bodies are ever asked to.He says he would typically study for around five to six hours a day — three to four hours through classes his teachers took for him, and another two or three hours spent learning from books, writing and practising questions. That number, on its own, may not sound extraordinary in India’s exam culture. But in Aarav’s case, the context changes everything. These were reclaimed hours, pieced together from fatigue, recovery, travel for treatment and the ordinary emotional drain that serious illness leaves behind.
How Aarav studied when time was short
If illness altered the quantity of time available to Aarav, it also shaped the quality of his preparation. “In terms of studies, the biggest challenge was that I couldn’t give as much time as I wanted because of chemotherapy and physiotherapy,” Aarav says. “I had to cover a large portion in a much shorter time and understand concepts quickly.”That emphasis on concepts became even more crucial because time itself had become scarce. “Since I didn’t have enough time to memorise everything, I focused more on understanding the concepts. I also practised sample papers and the questions given by my teachers.”The sample papers, in fact, seem to have played a decisive role in addressing one very practical difficulty: Speed. “During my pre-boards and mid-term exams, my speed was quite slow, and I even had to leave some questions,” he says. “My teachers advised me to focus on more sample papers, and that made a big difference. It helped improve my speed a lot. By the time I reached the board exams, I was able to attempt all the questions, and my speed was back to normal.”Notably, he did all this without relying on a conventional coaching ecosystem. “I didn’t really take any coaching or tuitions,” Aarav says. “My school supported me a lot, so I didn’t feel the need for it.” He used some YouTube videos and AI to create practice tests and identify likely question types. But when he speaks of support, his language returns, again and again, to people rather than tools. “AI,” he says, “may transform education, but it cannot replace teachers and their experience.” But beneath the flexibility of teachers, the support of technology and the absence of coaching, the real strength of Aarav’s preparation lay in the way he approached difficulty.“Whenever I find a concept, subject, or chapter difficult, I try not to stress about it,” he says. “I take it line by line and understand it slowly. Instead of memorising definitions, I prefer to write things in my own words.”
The people who held him up
For Aarav, the electric guitar gifted by his mother became one of the many small factors that helped him stay positive.
It is tempting, in stories of individual achievement, to isolate the individual too sharply, to make resilience appear self-generated, as though courage rises in a vacuum. Aarav’s account resists that myth. Again and again, his story returns to people.“As a student, I would say I’m most influenced by my parents — my mother, my father — and also my brother and grandparents,” he says. “My class teachers and the principal supported me a lot, so they’ve all had a strong influence on me.” So, behind that Board result stands a family that did not turn marks into a fresh burden, and a school that seems to have responded with practical, sustained support instead of token sympathy.There is one memory from school that captures this especially well. After a long gap following chemotherapy, Aarav returned to class to find that his teachers and classmates had surprised him with letters. The gesture is modest, but often that is how human grace announces itself. “I did not feel insecure or different from others,” Aarav recalls. “In fact, they made me feel very comfortable and I realised that friends are very important in life.” What is very striking in this story full of medical terms, schedules and performance metrics, is that a child, after illness, is made to feel included in his everyday world.The support extended beyond the classroom too. “Whenever I was physically or mentally exhausted, I would talk to my friends,” he says. “They always encouraged me and reassured me that everything would be all right. My class teachers also spoke to me during those difficult times.” Aarav’s parents, too, seem to have understood that recovery is not only medical. “They made sure I stayed positive. They got me games, movies, and my mom gifted me an electric guitar. These helped me stay engaged and distracted in a positive way,” Aarav says.Their support did not stop at helping their son stay cheerful through treatment, or at filling those hard days with games, films and an electric guitar so that illness did not swallow up every corner of his childhood. It also extended to something far less visible, but perhaps just as important in a country like ours, where board exams can turn homes into pressure chambers and parental anxiety often passes itself off as motivation. Aarav says his parents did not add to the Board exam pressure. “They told me that I just needed to pass. In fact, my father even said that 33 per cent was enough,” he recalls with a smile. Sometimes it is not ambition but its absence gives a child the room to breathe and do his best.
The courage he borrowed, and made his own
Courage, in Aarav’s case, does not seem to come only from the people around him or the ordeal he has had to endure. Some of it also comes from the private worlds that teenagers inhabit, and from the fictional figures who quietly teach them how to keep going. “As a person, I think I’m also influenced by the games I play and the characters in them,” Aarav says. “For example, Leon Kennedy — he has this never-give-up attitude, and I really admire that. Characters from movies and games have influenced and have also kept me positive during this journey.”
A mind turned to the stars
What saves Aarav’s story from collapsing into a single-note narrative of courage is that he does not come across merely as ‘the boy who battled cancer and topped’. He also comes through, quite distinctly, as a student with changing interests and a mind already leaning towards questions larger than the next exam.Before Class 8, he says, biology was his favourite subject. Then physics took over. “This is a subject where you need to do a lot more than just memorizing,” he says. “You need to understand so many concepts.” He began reading about astronomy and space, physicists and their theories, even research papers. Somewhere in that movement from textbook learning to curiosity, one can already glimpse the ambition that now animates him: A future in astrophysics, perhaps in organisations such as ISRO or DRDO. “I enjoy learning about the universe,” he says. “So astrophysics feels like the right path for me.”
A gentler definition of success
Aarav Vats’ story reflects patience, discipline and quiet strength
Aarav now speaks of success in a way that feels both earned and unusually clear-eyed for someone his age. “I don’t think success is ever just about marks,” he says. “Skills matter a lot in life, and marks or degrees alone don’t guarantee a successful career.” Then he adds the line that perhaps best sums up all he has lived through. “At the same time, health is a big part of life. If you’re not healthy, nothing else really works.”For a boy who has already learnt, far earlier than most, how fragile ordinary life can be, this is not the wisdom of a topper speaking after success. It is the steadier, harder-won clarity of someone who has discovered that achievement means little if health, hope and the will to keep going are not intact.
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