Yvonne Webb

Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­leges in San Fer­nan­do and Ch­agua­nas made his­to­ry yes­ter­day when stu­dents from the broth­er schools copped the pres­ti­gious Pres­i­dent's Medal for their aca­d­e­m­ic achieve­ments in the 2011 CAPE ex­am­i­na­tion. Ker­ry Singh won the top award for Pre­sen­ta­tion Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do. The school won 20 schol­ar­ships in all-six open and 14 ad­di­tion­al. Shas­tri Ram, brought aca­d­e­m­ic glo­ry to Pre­sen­ta­tion, Ch­agua­nas, which al­so re­ceived a to­tal of 18 schol­ar­ships. The Ch­agua­nas school has won the Pres­i­dent's Medal sev­en times in the last 12 years. The last time their broth­er school in San Fer­nan­do won the Pres­i­dent's Medal was in 2005.

Both young men said they were elat­ed and hum­bled by their ac­com­plish­ments. "I feel over­whelmed right now, it's a very sur­re­al mo­ment for me and I am in dis­be­lief at this mo­ment," Singh, who is now teach­ing at his al­ma mater, said af­ter re­ceiv­ing the news from his prin­ci­pal Er­rol Jaikarans­ingh. Jaikarans­ingh said it was a big year for the school and they will re­quest a hol­i­day from the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to cel­e­brate their achieve­ment. He said the schol­ar­ship win­ners will be cel­e­brat­ed at the school's prize-giv­ing cer­e­mo­ny lat­er this year. Ker­ry Singh, third child of Dr Ram Singh and his wife, at­tor­ney Chris­tine Bal­roop-Singh, said based on the 12 dis­tinc­tions he re­ceived in the past three years he had an ex­pec­ta­tion, but al­so some lin­ger­ing doubts, that he would win the pres­ti­gious award.

He will soon take up stud­ies at MIT to pur­sue a pre-med de­gree, bio­med­ical en­gi­neer­ing or bio-en­gi­neer­ing, then sub­se­quent­ly go to Har­vard or Johns Hop­kins to study med­i­cine. Ram plans to ma­jor in me­chan­i­cal en­gi­neer­ing and mi­nor in ro­bot­ics en­gi­neer­ing. "I am ec­sta­t­ic. Words can­not be­gin to de­scribe how I feel," Ram said, with his par­ents school teach­ers Daniel and Yas­min at his side dur­ing the in­ter­view at his al­ma mater. "I have been work­ing for this since I was in Form One. I knew from the re­sults I would have got­ten the open schol­ar­ship, but I knew there was a lot of com­pe­ti­tion for the Pres­i­dent's Medal. I am pret­ty ex­cit­ed about it." Prin­ci­pal Cap­tain Gary Ribeiro said Ram's aca­d­e­m­ic ac­tiv­i­ties sig­nalled to them that he was go­ing to do some­thing great this year.

"In every one of his sub­jects, he came in the top ten in the Caribbean in the Low­er Six ex­am­i­na­tions and first in two, so it set up a very in­ter­est­ing sce­nario this year," Ribeiro said. The sto­ry of Shas­tri Ram's achieve­ment is one of tri­umph over ad­ver­si­ty to at­tain a goal. His fa­ther said no one was more de­serv­ing of win­ning the Pres­i­dent's Medal. "This is a very hum­bling ex­pe­ri­ence for us. Shas­tri stud­ied un­der ex­treme­ly harsh con­di­tions and to see this kind of achieve­ment is tru­ly a won­der­ful, won­der­ful bless­ing," he de­clared.