Have I regretted going the Polytechnic path rather than the JC path?
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Looking back 4 years ago, I made the decision to take the polytechnic path.
As a 16 years old girl, I thought studying psychology would be cool. What else could be more fun than sitting in the room, counselling patients? And since Temasek Polytechnic offered me the course of my dream, I gladly accepted it.
My parents were really supportive in my decision. I somehow convinced them that since I've already decided that I wanted to study psychology, I might as well jump straight into it rather than spending an extra 2 more years studying things that I didn't like or enjoy (apparently that's the same reason I used to validate my choice of university). And then, from my polytechnic life, I will study real hard to hop into the university I wanted.
I'm pretty sure they wanted me to go the JC and finally graduate from university. But I guess they realized that eventually, I'm the one studying and I should pick something I liked. They probably thought it was also cool for me to sit in the room and counsel patients. Moreover, studying abnormal behaviours have always been my mother's dream.
I had people around me telling me that this route was going to be a bad decision (coincidentally, they are the same group of people telling me that my choice of university was a bad decision too). When I shared my worries about not being able to study psychology if I were to enter junior college and fail it, they told me that psychology was an arts course, thus it was going to be really easy to enter.
I guess I was stubborn and just wanted to study psychology. And I was sick and tired of mugging my way just for a final exam that will determine my entire future.
So I took the unconventional path to university - the polytechnic route.
I spent 3 years of my life exploring what psychology really was in polytechnic. It was there that I realized that there were so much more to psychology than counselling. I learnt what people who study psychology do. I began to fall in love with research. I began to see myself studying things that I can apply to my everyday life. I began to like what I was studying.
But life in the polytechnic was not a bed of roses. This route clearly was not as simple or easy as what others perceive. People who said studying in polytechnic was slack, easy, and no biggie clearly haven't been in polytechnic or didn't put any effort to score well.
The competition in the polytechnic courses is incredibly tough, especially for courses with a very low cut off point. At my year of admission into psychology studies, the cut off point was L1R4 of 8 points. Every single student in my course could have gone to a good junior college.
Well, the only time I was in the top 10% of the cohort was probably in semester 1 when I scored a GPA of 0.03 away from the perfect GPA. I've never been on the director's list/dean's list, nor was even close to it. Yes, it was really competitive in my course of study. I'm sure it's the same for every course because I actually have friends scoring near perfect GPA in other courses.
When it came to the time when everyone was talking about university admissions, I started to worry about my GPA. My GPA was definitely more than 0.10 from the 90percentile for both NTU and NUS psychology but I was so afraid of not being able to be admitted into the two universities since my other course mates were also scoring such high GPA.
True enough, when NUS sent me their acceptance letter, I didn't receive any from NTU. I was devastated because I didn't receive my first choice. I saw course mates receiving letters from NTU and saying how happy they were. At that point of time, I probably regretted going the polytechnic path and trying to snatch for the little spaces universities provided for polytechnic students.
I realized how difficult it was to jump from the polytechnic path to the university path. Even though there are more places reserved for polytechnic graduates in local universities these days, the grades to enter the universities are increasing tremendously every intake.
After a month since NUS sent the acceptance letter and enrollment package, I had given up all hope on receiving NTU's letter. And that was when they decided to drop a surprise in my letterbox.
My guess is that NTU probably only sent me the letter after they've finished accepting the JC students. But still, I'm really grateful to receive the acceptance letter. I know of one of my course mate who scored a mere 0.01 GPA lesser than me and she didn't get any letter from NTU. I guess, I barely made the mark for NTU.
In the end, my polytechnic path sure did work out well. My aim was to get into an university to continue studying psychology and I achieved it.
But having been through this tough path,
I would seriously NOT recommend using the polytechnic as a jumping stone towards a local university.
Personally, I have not regretted my decision. I've learnt so many valuable things in polytechnic life that I would see as more useful than what I would study in the JC. Polytechnic really exposed me to many different things that I see as more practical and useful in my future life. Things like conducting research experiments, interviews, surveys, and of course my precious experience working in a research laboratory as a research assistant.
But at the current education state our country is in, it is much wiser to go to a JC and then be granted a space in the university. The thing is that even if you scored a diploma with merit, it would not guarantee a spot in the local university. The JC path is definitely easier than struggling and fighting for the few spaces allocated to polytechnic graduates by the local universities. I'm not saying studying for the 'A' levels will be easy and you will definitely get into the university, but there are definitely more spaces for the JC students than the polytechnic students.
As a 16 years old girl, I thought studying psychology would be cool. What else could be more fun than sitting in the room, counselling patients? And since Temasek Polytechnic offered me the course of my dream, I gladly accepted it.
My parents were really supportive in my decision. I somehow convinced them that since I've already decided that I wanted to study psychology, I might as well jump straight into it rather than spending an extra 2 more years studying things that I didn't like or enjoy (apparently that's the same reason I used to validate my choice of university). And then, from my polytechnic life, I will study real hard to hop into the university I wanted.
I'm pretty sure they wanted me to go the JC and finally graduate from university. But I guess they realized that eventually, I'm the one studying and I should pick something I liked. They probably thought it was also cool for me to sit in the room and counsel patients. Moreover, studying abnormal behaviours have always been my mother's dream.
I had people around me telling me that this route was going to be a bad decision (coincidentally, they are the same group of people telling me that my choice of university was a bad decision too). When I shared my worries about not being able to study psychology if I were to enter junior college and fail it, they told me that psychology was an arts course, thus it was going to be really easy to enter.
I guess I was stubborn and just wanted to study psychology. And I was sick and tired of mugging my way just for a final exam that will determine my entire future.
So I took the unconventional path to university - the polytechnic route.
I spent 3 years of my life exploring what psychology really was in polytechnic. It was there that I realized that there were so much more to psychology than counselling. I learnt what people who study psychology do. I began to fall in love with research. I began to see myself studying things that I can apply to my everyday life. I began to like what I was studying.
But life in the polytechnic was not a bed of roses. This route clearly was not as simple or easy as what others perceive. People who said studying in polytechnic was slack, easy, and no biggie clearly haven't been in polytechnic or didn't put any effort to score well.
The competition in the polytechnic courses is incredibly tough, especially for courses with a very low cut off point. At my year of admission into psychology studies, the cut off point was L1R4 of 8 points. Every single student in my course could have gone to a good junior college.
Well, the only time I was in the top 10% of the cohort was probably in semester 1 when I scored a GPA of 0.03 away from the perfect GPA. I've never been on the director's list/dean's list, nor was even close to it. Yes, it was really competitive in my course of study. I'm sure it's the same for every course because I actually have friends scoring near perfect GPA in other courses.
When it came to the time when everyone was talking about university admissions, I started to worry about my GPA. My GPA was definitely more than 0.10 from the 90percentile for both NTU and NUS psychology but I was so afraid of not being able to be admitted into the two universities since my other course mates were also scoring such high GPA.
True enough, when NUS sent me their acceptance letter, I didn't receive any from NTU. I was devastated because I didn't receive my first choice. I saw course mates receiving letters from NTU and saying how happy they were. At that point of time, I probably regretted going the polytechnic path and trying to snatch for the little spaces universities provided for polytechnic students.
I realized how difficult it was to jump from the polytechnic path to the university path. Even though there are more places reserved for polytechnic graduates in local universities these days, the grades to enter the universities are increasing tremendously every intake.
After a month since NUS sent the acceptance letter and enrollment package, I had given up all hope on receiving NTU's letter. And that was when they decided to drop a surprise in my letterbox.
My guess is that NTU probably only sent me the letter after they've finished accepting the JC students. But still, I'm really grateful to receive the acceptance letter. I know of one of my course mate who scored a mere 0.01 GPA lesser than me and she didn't get any letter from NTU. I guess, I barely made the mark for NTU.
In the end, my polytechnic path sure did work out well. My aim was to get into an university to continue studying psychology and I achieved it.
But having been through this tough path,
I would seriously NOT recommend using the polytechnic as a jumping stone towards a local university.
Personally, I have not regretted my decision. I've learnt so many valuable things in polytechnic life that I would see as more useful than what I would study in the JC. Polytechnic really exposed me to many different things that I see as more practical and useful in my future life. Things like conducting research experiments, interviews, surveys, and of course my precious experience working in a research laboratory as a research assistant.
But at the current education state our country is in, it is much wiser to go to a JC and then be granted a space in the university. The thing is that even if you scored a diploma with merit, it would not guarantee a spot in the local university. The JC path is definitely easier than struggling and fighting for the few spaces allocated to polytechnic graduates by the local universities. I'm not saying studying for the 'A' levels will be easy and you will definitely get into the university, but there are definitely more spaces for the JC students than the polytechnic students.