Basket.

"A, B, E but no place in the local universities" - letter to ST Forum, 29 May 2007.

MY DAUGHTER'S recent applications for entry to the three local universities - Nanyang Technological University, National University of Singapore (NUS) and Singapore Management University - were all rejected. The reasons given were an overwhelming response, limited places in the universities and stiff competition.

My daughter is an above-average student who had excelled in sports. She has met all the criteria for entry to a local university. Is being eligible not enough? Must one now get extraordinary grades to be granted a place in university?

Like her, many young Singaporeans her age must have had their dream of pursuing a higher education dashed recently. Ironically, the universities are still advertising for applications. Are they looking for A-star performers who have more than one option? Are they raising their standards for applicants so that they will be able to improve their world ranking - just like an elite school or junior college that accepts only the best in Singapore so that ultimately its ranking will be at the top?

The Minister for Education had said that 'no Singaporean should be deprived of a good education', so what about the many students, like my daughter, who are qualified to enter university after two years of hard slog, only to be told that they had not been selected due to limited vacancies and stiff competition?

The Education Ministry should look into this problem with a sense of urgency as it only shows a lack of planning to meet the aspirations of young Singaporeans who want to study for a degree.

Local universities are publicly funded. Isn't it about loyalty and kinship that citizens are given a chance to study there as long as they are eligible for entry?

Are my daughter's grades of an A, B, C (General Paper) and an E not good enough?

My son, who is 27 years old and had A-level grades of A, B and C, graduated with a Second Upper Class Honours degree in the Arts and Social Sciences at NUS.


A sadly common phenomenon in this country are letters such as that above, which I have dubbed the "My son" variety in cheerful defiance of the subject's actual gender, due to such missives almost invariably beginning with "My son...". Look out for these especially towards the end of every year, when parents anxious about their twelve-year-olds' chances of making it to RI/RGS/Generic Top SAP School compose thinly-disguised complaints to the Straits Times; credit to our august national broadsheet for always, year after year, taking the time to publish crap like that instead or using the space for something a little more enriching.

Such letters are invariably an unholy mixture fear, desperation and self-righteous anger. They show up what I believe is the greatest social defect in this country - the entitlement complex. The letter above is no different - classically, its logic reduced to the simplest form is that the letter-writer's scion worked hard for his/her exams, and so ought to get what he/she aimed for. Now, anyone who has spent more than a couple years in secondary school is going to realise that this way of thinking is terribly flawed. Diligence equals success is something that the Ministry of Education would like every single student to believe, but it is simply not true. What diligence does is to give one a greater chance of success - but the odds of failure can still remain daunting. Most of the time, they do.

And thus, people work hard but don't do well. I've seen countless cases. My classmates, batchmates, relatives and most recently, students. The reasons for failure are many and varied. We are all human and fallible and life has a nasty habit of not letting us always have what we want, to put it lightly. But the best reaction to failure is to try again. Learn from your mistakes and give it another go. Somehow, that is the important lesson most people on this piece of dirt never seem to realise.

Instead, Singaporeans' reaction to failure is more commonly to whine. Unfair questions, a lack of time to complete the paper, unreasonable societal expectations... I've heard it all before. The annual controversy over the PSLE Maths paper is the most palpable manifestation of this effect. Obviously parents want the best for their children, but what lesson are they imparting to their offspring here? If at first you fail, whine and whine until they let you succeed? Well, you are certainly doing a good job of teaching your child proper moral values there.

Now, time to take our latest letter-writer to task.

"MY DAUGHTER'S recent applications for entry to the three local universities - Nanyang Technological University, National University of Singapore (NUS) and Singapore Management University - were all rejected. The reasons given were an overwhelming response, limited places in the universities and stiff competition."

The very nerve of our local universities, how dare they deny admission with such blatantly unreasonable excuses. How dare everyone else in Singapore work hard to do well! This is manifestly a nationwide conspiracy against my daughter. And how dare our universities have only limited places! Obviously they must open a vortex of space-time using arcane Babylonian moon rituals in order to create a dark campus of unholy magnitude.

"My daughter is an above-average student who had excelled in sports. She has met all the criteria for entry to a local university. Is being eligible not enough? Must one now get extraordinary grades to be granted a place in university?"

Beg your pardon sir, but last I checked you were not the dean of Admissions at any of the afore-mentioned universities. Which little bird told you that your daughter has met all the criteria for entry to a local university? Don't talk out of your ass, please.

In addition, your daughter's grades are, to put it mildly, quite a bit short of being "extraordinary".

"Like her, many young Singaporeans her age must have had their dream of pursuing a higher education dashed recently. Ironically, the universities are still advertising for applications. Are they looking for A-star performers who have more than one option? Are they raising their standards for applicants so that they will be able to improve their world ranking - just like an elite school or junior college that accepts only the best in Singapore so that ultimately its ranking will be at the top? "

I really think you ought to stop mentioning "A-star performers" when your daughter is hardly among that number. Grades matter for university entry, your daughter's were simply not good enough, kindly learn to live with that fact.

"The Minister for Education had said that 'no Singaporean should be deprived of a good education', so what about the many students, like my daughter, who are qualified to enter university after two years of hard slog, only to be told that they had not been selected due to limited vacancies and stiff competition?"

WOW UNIVERSITIES ACCEPT STUDENTS ON ACADEMIC MERIT, WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT?!

Hard work not necessarily = success. Would have thought you old enough to understand that by now.

Also limited vacancies again? Well, vortex of space time, moon rituals, I guess.

"The Education Ministry should look into this problem with a sense of urgency as it only shows a lack of planning to meet the aspirations of young Singaporeans who want to study for a degree."

The only problem here is your inability to grasp the very simple concept that universities admit students based on academic merit, and your daughter failed to meet the standards they set. Hence, she did not get in. I do not know how this explanation can possibly be made easier for your understanding.

"Local universities are publicly funded. Isn't it about loyalty and kinship that citizens are given a chance to study there as long as they are eligible for entry?"

It is not up to you to say whether your daughter is eligible for entry. That is for the universities you applied to to determine. And, one more time, universities admit students based on academic merit. Are you suggesting that they stop doing that? Are you suggesting with your use of the words "loyalty and kinship" that university admissions be transformed into a cesspool of nepotism and cronyism?

"Are my daughter's grades of an A, B, C (General Paper) and an E not good enough?"

That would indeed appear to be the case, good sir.

"My son, who is 27 years old and had A-level grades of A, B and C, graduated with a Second Upper Class Honours degree in the Arts and Social Sciences at NUS."

Your point being...?

In conclusion, this good fellow countryman of mine should:

1) Encourage his daughter to try again for university admission next year.

OR

2) Encourage his daughter to retake her A-Level examinations in order to achieve better grades.

OR

3) Somehow get enough money to send her somewhere which will take her.

This good fellow countryman of mine must:

1) Understand that the solution to failure is to try and try again, not whine and whine again.

AND

2) Stop writing angsty self-righteous rants to waste newsprint.

It is my hope that he comes to his senses.