<p>confused_vnese: are you from NJC by any chance? 
and a big BIG congratulations!</p>
<p>you’re an Indian applicant, however, your accomplishments will be considered in context of your education in Singapore. </p>
<p>rank - your school reports exact ranks? well, my rank is top quartile (school reports in quartiles) and so it’s ok for me. i don’t know whether your rank will affect you much though… sorry >P</p>
<p>honestly, i think they aren’t all that rigid. it’s not like they have huge huge huge singapore and india applicant pools with which they can compare you. i think it’s a subjective thing and depends from place to place. and because you did half your HS in india and half here, i’ve a feeling the AOs will keep that in mind</p>
<p>^ Actually they do have a large Singaporean applicant pool to compare (and do note that the opportunities you get at RJ/HC/NJ/VJ are almost exactly the same - A-levels, Olympiads, the usual competitions, etc…). </p>
<p>I observe that everyone who is anyone at my JC at least (plus some people who are nobodies) applies to overseas universities.</p>
<p>er yeah the singapore and india pools are HUGE. among the largest among all the countries.</p>
<p>and what’s the point of knowing all this? focus on what you have control over.</p>
<p>Hey there just wondering where do Singaporean students outside the top 5 JCs usually go to in US?</p>
<p>I personally know 2 from ACJC in Stanford’s Class of 2012 (but then ACJC can be considered a Top 5 JC as well so I am not sure).</p>
<p>hey. do we have any precedent of getting financial aid from U chicago? Not necessarily full aid. I heard it was almost impossible, but on RJ website they do have a lot of people admitted there. Cant possibly be all self-financing I guess?</p>
<p>darklord: i guess if you’re going to ask fin. aid at chicago, your chances of getting accepted will be significantly lower. </p>
<p>to the rest: there’s a reason why i repeated the huge thrice. we’re larger than other countries because outside of the US and europe we’re among the ‘more educated’ nations. but the numbers who apply aren’t considered that huge such that it makes a difference if you’re in the indian or singaporean pool.</p>
<p>I just stumbled across this article by the The New Paper way back in Sep 08 (wasn’t around in Singapore to keep tabs): </p>
<p>[Was</a> I really inferior to straight-A students?](<a href=“http://www.asiaone.com/News/Education/Story/A1Story20080929-90553.html]Was”>AsiaOne, Asia's Leading News Portal, Get Latest News at AsiaOne)</p>
<p>Really hit a cord with myself when I realise one of the main reasons Mr Lim Wah Guan couldn’t succeed in Singapore was because his interest was in Chinese and Theatre Studies.</p>
<p>Mine is in Chinese and Linguistics, another one of those areas which seems not to fit in too well with the educational system Singapore promotes. I’m not grudging the system though, because it makes sense to me that given the population and resources, limitations and sacrifices have to be made.</p>
<p>I think another reason Mr Lim wasn’t able to excel during his JC years was because Chinese education in Singapore is highly restrictive. Even at the JC level, MOE seems to think that a good understanding of Chinese (here in the sense of its entirety: language, history, philosophy and culture etc.) is adequately reflected through memorization of model answers to ancient literary works, essays and reading comprehension…</p>
<p>Though my own path is not as rocky as Mr Lim, I too have felt that my ability and enthusiasm for the Chinese language was being undermined until I got into the university. I was lucky to have made it into NUS where I did much better than in JC. I believe if NUS had allowed Mr Lim in, he would have similarly shined through.</p>
<p>This is one failing of the NUS admission that stems from a lack of viable colleges in Singapore.</p>
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<p>Don’t buy into that bull of a myth yo…</p>
<p>That’s what they’ve told you since primary school. Why, we can’t afford to have souls. They’re not pragmatic. The people must make sacrifices for the Greater Collective of Pragmatic Neoconfucianism. Except for the ministers themselves, of course. </p>
<p>I was a student who became fascinated with linguistics in American high school. How ironic that I only became interested in the diverse history of the Chinese language only after I left Singapore for the second time! And I was interested in the aspects of Chinese culture and language that never seemed to be discussed or emphasised. Not that overdone filial piety, morality or whatever, but things like substrata in the Chinese culture; how the predecessor to the morpheme “hua” (for things Chinese) was once pronounced “swra”; the Ta-Yuan and the interaction of the Macedonians with the Han Dynasty; the very fascinating suggestion (based on linguistic evidence) that there was some significant Indo-European linguistic diffusion into Old Chinese. (Like Old Chinese Old Chinese, not what is essentially contemporary “Classical” Chinese.)</p>
<p>But in Singapore, there is no room for critical inspection of cultural propaganda or identity; just spoon-feeding. Has anyone ever attempted to confirm the basis of the concept of the “Han” people anyway? If you just compare people from north to south, you can already see clear genetic gradients within the so-called Han. But in Singapore, mixing Chinese culture and the scientific method would be obviously trampling over some sacred cows …</p>
<p>interesting you guys suddenly talked about this. I too do not buy those making sacrifices bull****. Singapore’s GDP per head ranks top of the world and people are not given some latitude to pursue their passion? please… What exactly is the meaning of life when everyone sacrifices himself for the greater good of what? Economic boom? Singapore basically practices command economy when it comes to labor market. When the government liked research, huge fund was flooding to RI and related scholarships. Of course students then follow suit for practical reasons. But people who love arts, drama, literature, even pure theoretical science(not application based)? Who cares if it satisfies your curiosity or fulfills your inner life? Nobody gives a damn cos you dont bring home any money. I dont presume I know full well but I suppose that’s why lots of ppl go to US to study. The flexibility and individual liberty are guaranteed in almost every way.
and Singapore has a low Happiness Index? You don’t say…</p>
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<p>i would say with great confidence that almost all of them did not apply for aid, if not all. three possible outcomes for admitted students: self-finance, scholarship, or just not go at all. :)</p>
<p>yeah… but then again each year has so many surprises… lots of ppl got defered from Yale… It used to be high rejection rate… how can we trust any previous data… sigh</p>
<p>what are you getting at? fyi Yale’s SCEA deferral rate has always been very high, just that most deferrees get rejected at RD. the high rejection rate you have in mind is the RD rejection rate, which also has always been very high. nothing has changed. it’s very predictable. don’t count on getting any finaid from uchicago.</p>
<p>Tbh i too havent heard of any international who got into UChicago with finaid. Fyi this year Yale SCEA’s acceptance went 5 percentage points down, rejection two times as high as last year’s. It’s on the Yale Daily News i think. So lots of people got deferred, yes, but no where as many as last year’s.</p>
<p>Dartmouth only took in 21 internationals during the ED round (out of more than 400 acceptees). So if anything, things seem changed this yea, for worse.</p>
<p>I read the article, and wow, things really changed this year! The article suggests its due to the unexpectedly high SCEA yield rate last year, which may be due to Harvard and Princeton eliminating early rounds for the first time. But I would expect numbers to stabilise in future years.</p>
<p>Hi guys, i am new to this forum and I have been following the updates in this thread. I am a poly graduate and I have applied to umich. Right now, i am in the dilemma if I should retake my SAT1 again. I scored 590CR, 780 M, 550 WRT. Is it advisable for me to retake SAT? I was wondering if Singaporean student usually receive TOEFL exemption in USA? For my case i think my CR is really too low to be considered for TOEFL exemption.</p>
<p>AP English Language and Composition exam?</p>
<p>(They also get you credit…)</p>
<p>Is there something wrong with you, Galoisien?</p>
<p>Usually Singaporean students try to exempt TOEFL. However, in your case, infin, I would advise you to take TOEFL! Your SAT scores aren’t very favourable, so submitting TOEFL would reflect better on you.</p>