Durban North matriculant to study medicine this year
The 18-year-old who attended Durban North College, achieved seven distinctions.
DURBAN North College graduate, Shweta Harilal will be studying towards her MBChB at UKZN this year. As one of KZN’s top two achievers in the 2019 NSC matric exams, she joins fellow achiever, Aaron Naidu who has registered for a BSc degree majoring in Data Science.
Harilal was the top NSC candidate from KZN public schools, whilst Naidu was the top NSC achiever from KZN independent schools, who also came first in KZN overall and second in South Africa in the NSC exams.
“I am very excited to be joining UKZN. I chose this university because it’s closer to home and has the best facilities that any medical student could hope for – I couldn’t have chosen better,” said Harilal.
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The 18-year-old who attended Durban North College, achieved seven distinctions and still cannot believe that of the 116 937 grade 12 government school pupils who sat for the 2019 NSC exams in KwaZulu-Natal, she received the highest marks – with 96 per cent in Core Maths, 95 per cent in Life Sciences, 97 per cent for Accounting, 97 per cent in Afrikaans, 94 per cent for English, 99 per cent in Physics and 90 per cent for Life Orientation. She says her recipe for success was simply long hours dedicated to studying and practicing Maths over and over again.
“Anyone can do it, it’s possible,” she added.
Dean and Head of the School of Clinical Medicine at UKZN, Professor Ncoza Dlova, said: “We pride ourselves on being an Institution of choice for many high flyers like Shweta. UKZN was recently ranked number one in Africa on the prestigious Times Higher Education Young University Rankings, which lists the world’s best universities. This shows how serious we are when it comes to academic and research excellence.”
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Whilst Harilal has opted for the Health Sciences, super achiever Aaron Naidu knew that Mathematics was for him. With a 100 per cent score for Core Maths in the NSC matric exam and 99 per cent for AP Maths (written through the IEB), his decision to register for a BSc majoring in Data Science was an easy one.
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