Born two minutes apart, 17-year-old Anandita Misra and Aditya Misra scored the exact same scores in class 10 in 2020. Two years later, the unidentical twins – who studied at Gurugram’s Sottish High International School – have not only scored (pretty much) the same score but have also topped the Indian School Certificate (ISC) Class 12 result.
Anandita, the older twin, has got 99.75 percent, while Aditya has got 99.50 percent. Anandita’s score is a tie with 18 students, and Aditya’s with 58 students.
The two spoke to The Quint about healthy competition, their future, and online classes.
'We're Competitive Yet Supportive of Each Other'
“Healthy competition has always existed between us, but we helped each other out too,” said Aditya. Although their way of preparing was vastly different, each night they would sit together to clear each other’s doubts.
While they prepared together sometimes, they both had different studying methods. Aditya said, "she would like to read a chapter twice while I would read the chapter, answer the questions and come back later."
This routine of spending some time together to clear doubts helped, especially since there were no offline classes in school.
Aditya said, "The lockdown began when class 10 was ending. We did not even realise that school was ending," adding that while it was difficult initially, they got used to online learning eventually.
Both studied Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics in common. In addition to these subjects, Anandita studied Economics while Aditya took up Computer Science.
There was pressure on both of us to do well. We aimed for the same result but later realised that a mark here or there won’t make much difference.Anandita Misra
The twins have chalked out their future plans too. Aditya said, "We are both aiming for colleges in the UK and Singapore. It is not a criterion that we get admitted to the same college but if we do, it will be perfect."
While Aditya plans on pursuing Computer Science, Anandita wants to study Economics and then streamline into Behavioural Economics.
"Online Classes Were Difficult at First"
Like most others their age, they lost out on their final years in school as classes shifted online. The initial months posed new sets of challenges.
“Our writing was affected because we started typing instead of writing. We were not interacting with our teachers much either. I felt a loss of interest with online classes," said Anandita, while Aditya spoke about headaches and eye strain at first.
There was a lot of confusion because there was a mix of online and offline classes in the final year. We did not know what the medium would be. That added to the pressure of boards.Anandita Misra
When the twins finally went back to see their school after two whole years, they reminisced their school days, adding that current batches should cherish their days in school. Anandita added, "When we went back, we realised that we had missed out on the little things such as recess, and interactions with teachers over the past two years. We didn’t get to say a proper goodbye"
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