Universities & Perspectives

I attended my first University exhibition when I was 14. Back then, we were all in the IP craze, applying to all the new and novel programmes that many seniors in years before us did not have the option of choosing. Many also left to study overseas for expedited Foundation Programmes followed by Uni degrees, in places like the US, but none more popular than Australia. I still have many friends there, and an Australian Uni fair was thus the first one I ever attended back in '04, where I briefly considered that option amidst all the offers being made. Since then, I have attended exhibitions at least once a year, in hotels, convention centres, schools, statutory boards, government offices and University campuses. I remember the NUS open house of 2008 being a rather festive event, where I met many people I knew who, in like-minded fashion, were considering their options a year in advance. There were balloons, loud music, goodie bags and talks. This year's Open Houses will probably be no different, and it is the part-festivity, part-academic and part-social nature of these events that draws me to them. Having given the SMU and London Uni ones a miss last weekend, this weekend's NTU and NUS ones beckon.

One more thing about Unis to round off my post - that about perspectives. Where I come from, people rarely talk about going to local Universities. When in the midst of UCAS during the prelims or Common App just before results were released, our Uni conversations were dominated by discussions of how difficult our Oxford interviews were, how tedious UPenn's Short Answer Question was, or how many RJ/HC/ACIB people we saw at the Harvard/Yale/Cambridge talk. To me, the challenge has always been which of the plethora of prestigious courses in which of the pantheon of these Universities should we apply to. Only recently has my focus been drawn to local University applications, free from the necessary assumptions we made during the international applications. Honest to goodness, meat and potatoes solid local Universities at our doorstep. What came as a little bit of a surprise to me was the different perspectives towards the courses these local institutions offered. For me, getting a place in NUS' Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) seemed natural because of the courses I was applying to in Oxford/LSE/Durham/NYU etc. But, as I soon found out, the one question people, my parents included, seemed to ask straight out was why I didn't get a place in Law instead. And to tell the truth, I wasn't sure either. It has come to light that the 231-odd places offered in my batch are rather highly sought after, the second most challenging after NUS Med. So now, it's a matter of whether I wish to put myself in the running and get a Law interview, or simply sit tight with my Arts and Social Science offer which always seemed natural to me. Opinions welcome.