A 19-year-old whose mother was killed in the December 2004 tsunami in Aceh has passed an entrance examination for Tokyo's Waseda University and is set to begin four years of study from next year.

Rahmat, who graduated from an Islamic boarding school in Aceh Besar near the Aceh provincial capital Banda Aceh, will major in international liberal studies at the university under a full scholarship program granted by Tokyo-based nonprofit organization Ashinaga.

"We are all very happy and very proud of him, as he is the first person in our hometown in Pidie Regency and our family's residential area in Pungeh who can study abroad," Rahmat's sister, Nuraini, 28, said, referring to a coastal area hardest hit by the tsunami.

Born in Sigli in Pidie Regency, and fluent in English and Arabic, Rahmat lost his father due to illness in a Banda Aceh hospital on Dec. 5, just a day before he took the entrance test in Tokyo.