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Encouraging tale of A-level success

Jocelyn Wong

A total of 39,774 local students received their results for the Hong Kong Advanced Level Examination today.

Of the students who sat the exams, 36,106 applied to the Joint University Programmes Admission System (Jupas) and are competing for 14,500 first-degree places.

This year, the number of students scoring three or more As has gone up by a third.

One student scored six straight As, 21 got five As, 68 secured four and 276 earned three, according to the Examinations and Assessment Authority.

The number of special needs students has also increased from 162 last year to 216 this year.

This year, five of these students were among the top achievers. One of them was Ma Yuet-kwan, 20, a Form Seven student at the Church of Christ In China - Ming Yin College.

Ma suffers from muscular dystrophy and is wheelchair-bound. Her revision was once severely disrupted when she caught a bad cold in January.

'I had to stay in bed for almost a month. On the first few days, I was persistent about my studies,' Ma says. 'But soon it became worse and I had to stop.'

But despite her disability, and being ill on exam day, too, Ma remains upbeat. 'I have the ability,' she says. 'Just because I needed extra time did not mean I could not finish the exam.'

Ma eventually earned three As, and she hopes to get a place at Chinese University to study psychology.

For more details about yesterday's A-level results, top-achieving students and some of the candidates who battled adversity to sit the exam, check out the 'City' section of the South China Morning Post

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