AP Calculus AB 5/5 in 10th Grade and the Quiet Work Behind Mahnya's Score

Anand and Poorni Balakrishnan had already watched one daughter prepare for AP Calculus. When their younger daughter Mahnya's turn came, she was still a sophomore.

That turn is now complete. Mahnya, a 10th grader in the US, scored a perfect 5 out of 5 on the AP Calculus AB exam. Rajini Balaji, the Cuemath tutor who had already taught her older sister Mahima, took Mahnya through the same two courses in online math tutoring, Precalculus first and then Calculus.

By then, the family knew Cuemath well. The classes that began with her older sister had gone well enough that when Mahnya reached Precalculus, there was no search for a tutor and no second-guessing. She simply started.

What was new was the timing. AP Calculus AB is a college-level course, and Mahnya met it as a sophomore, with her way of working already set: quiet in class, focused, quick to finish, and at her best on the conceptual problems that ask why something works rather than what step comes next.

"Mahnya had been with me, for two years ( Pre-calculus and Calculus). Both Mahnya and her sister Mahima have been tutored under me for their Pre-cal and Cal courses. Mahnya was a quiet child, very efficient in her work and highly focused. Her silent dedication and commitment is what has shown wonderful colours today. Wishing both the sisters the best."

Rajini ran the sessions on problems more than conversation. She would pick the problems Mahnya did best, the sort that reward understanding over speed, and let her think them through on the shared Math Canvas while the reasoning appeared line by line. The work was precise and complete, and it kept coming. Two years of that steady work is where the confidence came from, one solved problem at a time.

AP Calculus AB is a College Board course that covers the equivalent of a first-semester college calculus class: limits, derivatives, integrals, and the reasoning that connects them. The exam is scored from 1 to 5. In 2026, about 292,000 students took it, and 20 percent earned a 5. Mahnya reached that top score with two full years of high school still ahead of her. She is not the first at Cuemath to move this early either. Another 10th grade student, Aaishi, scored a perfect 5 on AP Precalculus, the course that comes just before Calculus.

Mahnya's parents came to Cuemath for one daughter and stayed for two. Mahnya started on a path her sister had already proven, finished it in her own way, and became MathFit doing it. The score report said out loud what her tutor had known all along. Work like hers cannot be crammed into the spring before the exam. It starts a year or two earlier, which means the students who will look calm in next May's exam room are starting now.