It’s 4 days till the deadline for prospective university students to accept their offers, and many students, understandably, are getting more and more anxious. The COVID-19 pandemic haven’t been kind to university admissions, and offers have been coming in later than usual (at least in my experience), and looking at the people around me, there’s a huge range of people having different types of struggles with university admissions.
On the lower end of things, it’s heart wrenching to see some of my friends come to terms with the score that they got. The rush to find options and gather the necessary materials for the applications can be quite daunting, especially when you haven’t prepared for it beforehand.
Adding on to that, one probably has to write multiple essays for the different schools, who mostly have different requirements. Even for me, it was a massive pain, and the procrasination was real.
Their futures were uncertain, and I was worried for them. Those were close friends whom I want to see succeed. Mulling over their choices, and trying to figure out which would fit their interests best, got me feeling very lucky, that I already had an offer that I was very happy with.
Those were close friends whom I want to see succeed.
My thoughts drifted to the hundreds of other students who don’t have much choice, and I wonder how they must be feeling. Mustn’t be good. Heck, I’ve met a couple of them on SGExams, and it was hard to digest the emotions they’ve been going through.
But with an A Levels certificate that presumably isn’t very good, the number of pathways available to you simply isn’t plentiful. With private universities or a polytechnic being the only two choices, it’s down to either spending a whack ton of money, or going to a school that you could have gone two (or more) years ago.
Switching gears to another circle of friends, and suddenly, I’m at the bottom rung of the ladder. With scores easily outshining mine, their goals weren’t just the local universities — they had their sights set on overseas universities, and some with the support and committment from the government, in the form of a scholarship.
They have the world in their palms, and all the success one could dream of.
Speaking to them about university spots got me feeling very small. They have all the choices they could want, but here we are, feeling lucky at every single opportunity we have. They have the world in their palms, and all the success one could dream of.
I am by no means complaining, I am grateful for what I have. However, the thought of someone saying “I should probably figure out how to reject my university offer” because they’ve already gotten a better offer overseas is extremely scary, especially considering the other end of the spectrum, where people have the celebration of their lives after getting a university offer from any of the autonomous universities in Singapore.
In the grand scheme of things, a university offer doesn’t matter. More interviews are held each year, people are accepted, they celebrate; people get rejected, they despair. Life moves on.
Every single one of us lives in our own world, and no matter how hard we try, most of us will always be hopelessly oblivious to the world around us. We will experience the beautiful and the ugly, but at the end of the day — and our lives, we’ll always be just a small speck in a world where we’re perpetually trying to one up each other.
