In how many ways can we distribute 10 identical looking pencils to 4 students so that each student gets at least 1 pencil?

Options are 5040,210,84 or none of these.

The problem makes use of the concept of combination. Since the pencils all looked the same, you just have to select 4 out of the 10 without concerning about their order. There are 10C4 ways which is numerical equivalent to 210.