It’s back this year by popular demand! Dear P6 students and parents, interested in learning a foreign language in secondary school but unsure of whether this is the right choice for you? Students from RI, NUSH and HCI share their insights! Sign up for the Annual Third Language Awareness Symposium held online on Saturday 29 November, 12-130pm, at tinyurl.com/ATLAS2025registration! Attend this Zoom symposium to receive a language app discount code. Slots are limited!! This symposium is funded by the National Youth Council. [image: 1763041727829-atlas-2025.jpg]

My child went to NUS as well, he participated in RAG as well as the various orientation camps and made many friends. To all parents out there, encourage your children to go for the semester exchange program to one of the overseas partner universities, it’s definitely a once in a lifetime experience for many. They will have the chance to live independently, meet new friends and learn about other cultures while having the opportunity to study abroad!

Cost to Singapore per pre tertiary scholar: Flight tickets: arrival+return+home and back to spore at mid point of study. Total 4 flights. $500x4=$2000 Lodging: $500 per month X 48 months (over 4 yrs study period)= $24000 Allowance: $500 per month X 48 months (over 4 yrs study period)= $24000 Schooling cost: 1 % of the cohort are scholars. Say secondary/JC average class size is 30. 1% of 30 students=0.3. On average there is 1 scholar in every 3 classes. MOE can use existing teaching infrastructure to house the scholars. No additional teaching spending needed on scholars. Schooling cost will be $0. Settle in allowance. Not sure what it entailed. Put it at $1000 Total cost to spore per pre tertiary scholar : $2000+ $24000+$24000+$1000=$51000, over 4 yrs. These few days the buzz is on China new AI model Deepseek. It is said to be as good as US’ ChatGPT and cost $6 million to develop vs ChatGPT’s billion of dollar. And China pull it off under chip/technology sanctions. Many US tech companies’ share prices taken some beatings because of Deepseek. During their 4 years studying in Singapore, friendships will be formed between our children and these PRC scholars. I don’t think our children have the opportunity to befriend the scholars’ parent. And PRC scholars are potential next generation leaders of companies. Even if these scholars do not work in Singapore after they graduated, our children ties with them across the world are valuable networks. Maybe their distributions around the world are better for Singapore as long as our networks with them are strong.

I think this is more prominent in faculties such as business or computer science, where undergraduates are vying for careers in competitive industries such as banking & finance, consulting or software engineering. As these industries often offer extremely high starting salaries, it’s inevitable that students are trying to stack their resume with internships to differentiate themselves. While there is no right or wrong, it certainly perpetuates a culture of competitiveness and comparison, and many eventually peg their success or identity to their career or job. It’s important that we eventually break out of this mentality as the rat race is only getting more vicious with time to come.

Eddow:Pen88n:Stated clearly in the S1 posting booklet:Students in the top 30% of the PSLE cohort who take higher Chinese at the PSLE will be given bonus points for admission to SAP schools according to the following:Distinction - 3 bonus points, Merit - 2 bonus points, Pass - 1 bonus point. 250 and above is top 10% of cohort. top 30% should be somewhere 240 and above, I think.Maybe there is no SAP school with cop <240.. which mean if want to get into a SAP and use the HMT, aggr must be quite high.. Have SAP schools with COP below 240, lah.I think the top 30% is not 240, but more likely around 230. How to know, I wonder.