The ASEAN Scholarship 2021-2022 (Application Stages)

If I were to be told in the beginning of 2021 that I would be going to Singapore on a scholarship in mid January 2022, I simply would have laughed and shook my head. Even in mid 2021, when I had first applied for the scholarship, I had never dreamt that I would even get past the first stage- the one which I had the least control over.

I did know of the scholarship before I had decided to apply for it, but it seemed so far away in the sense that hardly anyone, now that I think about it, no-one I know has ever gotten it- or even spoken about the prospect of it. And so when my father saw the advertisement online and asked me whether I would want to apply, I reluctantly agreed with some pursuance and help from my mother.

It was a simple enough task, I had to fill up some of my personal details as well as achievements and or CCAs I had taken up in school over the past few years. The main problem about this stage (for me) was the results submission part. Because of my age (I was 14 at the time) I had to apply for the secondary 3 scholarship however, since I was in an international school and had skipped Year 6, I was already in Year 10.

In the form we had to fill up, there were only options for year 7 and year 8 results, but my most recent results were from year 9. If anyone else were to face a problem like this, or just any other problem in general, I feel that it would be better to email your question to the email provided in their website (what I did) rather than taking a risk and possibly making a mistake in filling up the form.

After waiting for a few days for their reply, I simply followed their instructions to put in my year 8 results in the year 7 section, and my year 9 results in the year 8 section. I had emailed them my index number so they were aware, when looking through the results, which one was me. After submitting the form, all I could do was wait patiently for them to send me a reply back.

As months passed I didn’t know whether I had simply not gotten it or whether they hadn’t sent out the emails yet. The sheer suspense could kill. I had submitted the form in late March, and when I had finally received the email saying that I was accepted into the next stage, it was September. I had already lost hope by August, and the email came as such a shock. I assume that the lateness this year was due to Covid 19, as according to last year’s candidates, they had gotten it much earlier.

The excitement I felt that day is just indescribable, even though I knew that I had only gotten past the first stage and still had two more to go. I had gotten the email late in the night on September 15, although I only realised the next day, and the next stage, the selection test was to be held on October 3rd.

First I filled up a form to confirm my attendance at the selection tests. After I had done that, I was sent the location, time, as well as some videos on the syllabus for Singapore secondary 3 and 4 math and english. I had read through a few blogs of previous candidates to put into perspective what the difficulty of the exams would be, and one thing I definitely got from reading them was just how horrifyingly difficult the math exam would be. This fear really fuelled me as I wouldn’t say that that I’m that good at math myself. However, I did have a slight advantage, as after comparing the Singapore syllabus with the syllabus that I was doing at school at that time (IGCSE), they seemed pretty similar. I was just about to sit for my math IGCSE paper as well, so for those past few months we had been drilling pretty hard on math as well.

Except for one major variable that was a huge deciding factor, that I now regret not working harder on- the fact that we were not allowed to use a calculator. Since I was in an international school, for the whole of my secondary education, I was depending on a calculator and had totally forgotten all of my mental math. My advice to prepare for the math exam is to make sure your ability to calculate equations quickly and without a calculator is strong, and practice this skill by doing secondary 3 and 4 (if you have time, just to be sure) workbooks. By doing this I assume that you’d be as ready as you can get for the exams without any external help.

For the English exam, I did absolutely nothing to prepare myself. The IGCSE english paper is much, much more difficult compared to the selection test paper, so I had absolutely no worries for that paper. The duration of the papers: 

• Math – 2 hours 
• English (Comprehension & Vocabulary) – 1 hour 30 minutes 
• English (Writing) – 30 minutes.

On the day that I had to go for the exam, I was of course quite nervous, but as always, it wasn’t about the test itself, but about how I was going to get to the exam room- was I going to get lost? Would I be late? What if I don’t know which way to go? But these were unreasonable fears, as once I reached it was smooth sailing to the exam room, except for the small amount of waiting outside the building before we could enter. Your parents can accompany you until a certain point in which you will be pointed in the direction your respective rooms. You leave your bags (with your phone on silent) on a table by the entrance. You are only allowed to bring your stationary, in a clear pencil case (I just used a plastic ziplock bag), your water bottle, a small snack and any geometrical instruments.

First up was the math paper, which definitely fulfilled its reputation of being incredibly difficult. I barely managed to finish three quarters of the paper, and even of the questions I managed to answer I was quite sure i got half of them wrong. Simply, it was a nightmare. The english paper, however, was the exact opposite. I finished the comprehension and vocabulary paper with 45 minutes left. In fact, I wouldn’t even call it a comprehensive paper, as all the answers were barely 3 words long. For the writing paper, the two prompts we were given to choose from were; ‘Describe a time in which you were embarrassed in front of your friends’ and ‘Describe the benefits and disadvantages of working from home’. I, of course, chose the first one- I’ll never turn down the chance to write some fiction (non-fiction is my worst enemy).

My story was completely fictional and not based on any experimental I’ve ever had in the past- because it involved a murderer in hiding, fake friends and Cluedo- so obviously not. The story was a little rushed and my handwriting was horrible as I had a whole storyline and had to fit it into a timespan of 30 minutes, but all in all it turned out quite good. In my opinion, it was definitely my english marks that carried me through to the next stage.

Once again, I was so sure that I wouldn’t get the email to the interview stage purely due to the math paper. I had joined a group on instagram with some other candidates that had went for the selection tests and were awaiting the second email. In late October (Oct 27th), I woke up to a lot of messages on the Instagram group, people saying that they had got their email- and lo and behold I had gotten mine too. It had honestly felt like I was just scraping past each stage. Now, it was only one stage that stood between me and the scholarship. It seemed so close, yet so far.

Fortunately, I once again had a great opportunity to hone my skills, as my principal, who has trained her students before to go for all sorts of interviews, had offered to help me, and I gladly accepted it. To be honest, those sessions were a lifesaver. Some key points I can offer are to, most importantly, line out some key personality traits that you think the interviewers would be looking for, what is the point of the interview, what are they looking for? Maturity? Creativity? Determination? Once you’ve got your list, try to incorporate these values into your answers, but remember not to memorise any answers, it should be as natural as possible. Sounding robotic is a big no-no.

The 13th of November came about in a blink of an eye, and before I knew it, I was sitting in the waiting area of the British Council building in Kuala Lumpur, waiting for someone to call my name and take me to my doom. While I was sitting there in suspense, my mind was blank, only fixated on a spelling mistake on one of the signs pasted on the bathroom door (how ironic, British Council). Now, as I was panicking internally over a misspelled sign for no reason whatsoever, I was whisked away by one of the staff members to a glass room where I was asked to sit down in front of a computer and put on some headphones.

Due to the whole Covid-19 situation, the interview was held via Zoom, which made it a whole lot less scary. The interviewers were also really nice (and kept on pointing out what a nice smile I had), there were three of them, however only two asked the questions, the other was simply typing on a computer the whole time, writing out my answers for future reference I suspect. The majority of questions asked were about how I was going to accommodate and ‘survive’ in Singapore. These questions are definitely going to be asked as the MOE needs to make sure that you don’t bail on the scholarship halfway through because you aren’t able to cope with studies, or just the fact that you would be so far away from home. They also asked some questions about a time in which I felt really scared or nervous, and how I overcame it. In this portion I used the tip I mentioned above to sneak in some desired qualities into my answer. This is the reason why you can’t really memorise anything, as you really have no idea what they are going to ask you. I recommend asking family members or friends to ask you the most out-of-the-blue questions, and see what you come up with, because one thing you do not want to happen in the interview, is to be rendered speechless.

The interview stage was, of all three stages, the one which I was the most sure of passing through. And on the 27th of November 2021, I got the email saying that I had gotten the scholarship (while watching Pirates of the Caribbean, random, I know. You can blame my brother for that.) It was a whole journey, but at least it ended well. I honestly still can’t believe that I’m about to go to Singapore in a matter of weeks.

Good luck to anyone else wanting to apply for the ASEAN scholarship, or any other scholarship for that matter, and I hope that this helped you in some way. If you’re ever nervous about anything, well, what I do is listen to the same song on repeat and totally forget about what the problem is for a good 15 minutes, it really does work like magic for me. But it may not work for everyone. Find out what suits you. Now, with all that said and done, goodbye, and good luck.