T&T To­ba­go stu­dents shone at the Caribbean Ad­vanced Pro­fi­cien­cy Ex­am­i­na­tions (CAPE), top­ping sev­er­al sub­jects.

The re­sults re­leased by the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil showed that T&T ranked first in the re­gion in 40 sub­jects in Units One and Two.

Yes­ter­day, one of the many stu­dents who ex­celled in the ex­ams said a pas­sion to pur­sue med­i­cine helped him to stay fo­cused to achieve his goals.

In Bi­ol­o­gy Unit One, Erin Quam­i­na of St Joseph Con­vent, Port-of-Spain, ranked first in that sub­ject, while 18-year-old Arun Ram­nar­ine of Hillview Col­lege se­cured fourth place.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Ram­nar­ine said when he found out about the re­sults on Fri­day he was shocked. He said he was not on­ly proud not on­ly of his per­for­mance but al­so that of his school­mates.

Ram­nar­ine said Hillview Col­lege did ex­treme­ly well in all sub­ject ar­eas in both Unit One, Unit Two and CSEC.

Ram­nar­ine said he had a pas­sion for bi­ol­o­gy, and want­ed to study med­i­cine and even­tu­al­ly branch off in­to surgery.

Ex­plain­ing why he has his heart set on med­i­cine, he said the im­por­tance of health­care hit home for him at an ear­ly age.

“Ever since I’ve been a lit­tle boy it’s all I knew, and I’ve seen my grand­fa­ther (Har­ry Sookhai), he was di­ag­nosed with stage five can­cer in 2005 and he was giv­en six months to live, and he sur­vived for six years with the help of doc­tors. I think that was re­al­ly an ear­ly ex­po­sure to it and I have had clin­i­cal ex­po­sure over the years,” he said.

Grate­ful to his fam­i­ly for their sup­port, he said they in­stilled in him the val­ue of hard work.

Ram­nar­ine thanked his teach­ers for their ded­i­ca­tion and com­mit­ment and con­grat­u­lat­ed his school­mates.

“I am on­ly one part of the grand suc­cess that Hillview ex­pe­ri­enced this year, each stu­dent de­serves ku­dos for suc­cess,” he said.

He ex­plained that his ac­com­plish­ment came with a lot of “long nights of study­ing.” But he added ex­tracur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties were al­so im­por­tant as they helped him to build the dis­ci­pline he need­ed for his aca­d­e­mics.

“I think the whole thing about time man­age­ment re­lies on the pur­suit of your pas­sion, to do some­thing that you re­al­ly love and the dis­ci­pline to work to­wards it no mat­ter how lit­tle. Lit­tle by lit­tle you work to­wards your goal, no mat­ter how tired you are,” Ram­nar­ine ad­vised.

Mean­while, in the Span­ish Unit One pa­per, T&T grabbed the top ten spots, with Ali­cia Dipchan of St Joseph Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do top­ping the list.

Post­ing the Bi­ol­o­gy Unit One re­sults on his Face­book page on Sat­ur­day, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley con­grat­u­lat­ed the stu­dents, teach­ers and par­ents.

He wrote, “Notwith­stand­ing the ac­knowl­edged many chal­lenges, some­thing good is hap­pen­ing in many parts of our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem. As we con­grat­u­late these suc­cess­es, we con­tin­ue to strive to do even bet­ter across the wide spec­trum of ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties avail­able to our stu­dents, teach­ers, and par­ents.”