A month after losing her eye in a fatal suicide bombing at her academy, a young Hazara woman has finished among the top candidates in Afghanistan’s tough university entrance exams.

Results released over the weekend showed Fatima Amiri scored 313 out of a possible 360 ??points in the “Kankor,” a hard-fought test that more than 100,000 students took this year to win a coveted university place.

The top student received 355, but anything over 300 puts students in the very highest category.

“I’m glad I was successful in the field of my choice,” says Amiri, who wants to study computer science.

“But I’m not happy with my score. I wanted more,” she told AFP on Monday.

It was a brave performance by the 17-year-old who was seriously injured in the September 30 attack on a private college where dozens of young men and women were cramming for the kankor.

A suicide bomber entered the hall and went to the front – where girls and young women had been separated – and then detonated a bomb, killing at least 54 people.

Most in the hall belonged to the Afghan Hazara minority, Shia in a majority Sunni nation.

The community has been a frequent target of attacks by the Islamic State (IS) group, which it considers heretics, and Afghanistan’s new Taliban rulers said they killed six ISIS conspirators in a follow-up operation.

But education for girls like Amiri is tough enough without the threat of IS attacks.

The Taliban have closed secondary schools for girls in most of the country, but some private colleges – like the one Amiri attended – remain open.

Amiri was still recovering from her wounds when she took the exams – blind in one eye and deaf in one ear.

“I was happy to be able to take the exam, but my pain didn’t allow me to be very happy,” she said, bursting into tears.

“On the day of the exam, I felt the absence of my friends.”

When the results were announced, she rushed to the scene of the tragedy to pay tribute.

“I went there and told my friends who were martyred that I made it,” she said.

“I must continue my studies for them, even if it is difficult.”

Top Kankor students have a choice of the best courses at leading universities, but Amiri’s dream now is the opportunity to study abroad.

“I am sure that if I study here, the same incident will happen again and I could lose my life,” she said.