Scholarships, brightsparks, and more.

So after the career fair on Wednesday I think maybe you now have a better idea of the scholarships that are available to you! I thought I would write about scholarships in general in this post since I havent really been talking about them before.

There are 2 types of scholarships available, namely the bond-free types and the bonded types. The bond free types tend to be funded by the universities themselves - an example being the AB Duke Memorial Scholarship Programme (http://www.abduke.org/) or the NUS Global Merit Scholarship - or by private organizations, such as the Jardine Foundation or the Khoo Teck Puat Scholarship. All these scholarships are, as the name implies, bond-free, so it's really altruistic of the organizations to fund you/any other outstanding student overseas with no strings attached.

As a sidenote, you really should take a look at the Jardine scholarship if you are applying to Oxbridge because it's for selected colleges only and you may want to change the college that you are applying to as a result before the September 16 deadline for Cambridge applicants. (I heard there were only about 20 applicants from Singapore 2 years ago, such a waste) And you should take a look at the other bond-free scholarships available too by googling or finding out from the university that you want to attend, brightsparks isnt the only source available even though they seem comprehensive.

If you get desperate, there are some funny scholarships available that are like this: http://www.scholarship.harvard.edu/rf/rfall.html --> change your name anyone?

Now we will look at bonded scholarships.

There are a few ways that you can look at bonded scholarships:
1. A way to fund your studies overseas --> common type of thinking for those who cant fund your studies overseas
2. A way to fast track career + prestigious
3. A win-win situation to allow you to join the organization that you want to work in after your studies

A lot of times, people take up a scholarship just because they want to go overseas for their studies. But this is a very common pitfall that people fall into, because eventually when they come back from their studies they find themselves either 1. lured by all the other wonderful job opportunities there, or 2. miserable and sad that they have signed 6 years of their life away doing something that they dont like.

And that's why people say very carefully, THINK BEFORE YOU SIGN ON THE DOTTED LINE! That's effectively 4 years of study + 6 years of bond = 10 years that you are stuck with the organization.

If you break your bond, there is a VERY HEFTY fee that you have to pay, and you have to bear the title "bond breaker" everywhere you go. More importantly however, you would have already deprived someone else equally deserving of the chance of an overseas education and the scholarship that you got but decided to break - it's a moral thing. So please dont see a scholarship as a way to fund your overseas education, try to look beyond that and think about whether you really want to be in that organization for the next 10 years of your life, or you will sign and regret in future.

Me? I am happy working in the civil service, haha, so I didnt have such a tough choice to make. It would probably have been tougher if I didnt get PSC though because I wouldnt have been so sure about working elsewhere. I was sure that I didnt want to work in A*Star, so I didnt apply to it at all - yes I would rather go to NUS for undergraduate than get bonded to A*Star because I dont see myself doing research in future. But that's just me, some of you will probably be interested in it.

So how do you decide what scholarships are good for you, since there is such a long list of scholarships available? You can either mass spam (HMM) or shortlist a few that you like or wont mind, based on your interests or what you know about the organization.

What I did was to first shortlist the scholarships based on the courses that they were willing to fund me. For instance, I dont think I will be studying horticulture in university, so NParks was out for me. I didnt think I was going to study anything related to urban development, so URA was out for me, and so on. Of course you shouldnt take up a scholarship just because they fund your field of study, but it is somewhat related to the job knowledge and scope that you will need in future and I was quite sure I dont want to stare at plants the whole day.

Another tip I will give is to GO TO SCHOLARSHIP FAIRS! Take the brochures that they give you and read it, it often tells you the salient points of what the job is about and what joining the organization entails. Read it! Talk to people at the fair too because they will definitely give you some idea of what the job is about beyond what is written in each brochure. It also gives you an idea of whether the staff in the organization have a clear idea of their company's direction and vision. And if you need more info, there is always the World Wide Web.

So that's what I did, went to a scholarship fair, took all the brochures available, then started to shortlist them based on whether I liked the job description in the brochures. So it was something like *read* *chuck in pile for non-consideration* *read* *chuck in pile for possible/to scrutinize more closely* or *read* *read* *this looks good* *read* *MUST CHECK OUT*

I cant emphasize how important it is for you to like the job and the whole feel of how the organization is like before you sign on the dotted line. If you dont like the feel of it, you will be very miserable for the next few years, and you make the organization miserable too because then they have a very unhappy staff member. And you will get even more miserable when you see your friends enjoying their job while you are stuck in yours because you hate it so much.

Dont ever compelled to take a scholarship because you feel that you MUST go overseas for your undergraduate education. Maybe you see that 1. all your friends are doing it, or 2. it sounds prestigious, and so in the spur of the moment you sign on that dotted line. For all the talk about Harvard Yale Princeton etc, NUS is still not a bad place to be. I am serious. If I hadnt gotten a PSC scholarship, I would have seriously considered going to NUS.

If you really must go overseas to study, think about taking a study loan overseas if that option is available. Or beg for financial aid. Or if you manage to convince your parents, maybe they will let you take their lifetime savings (highly unrecommended). Or look on the bright side and know that you can go overseas for your graduate studies. But dont sign on the dotted line and then regret it when the time comes, because the high of getting a scholarship does not last 6 years. Maybe in the first month people are like wow you got a scholarship, wow cool etc but after that, it starts to hit and then you realized you signed yourself into a situation that you dont want to be in.

I say that because I know of people who already regret signing their bond (even before going to study! Can you imagine, they havent even started work and they are already regretting it) It makes me feel so lucky that I got the scholarship that I always wanted because my choice is markedly easier, but I dont want you all to fall into the same predicament as my friend is in right now.

And before I end off this article, I just wanted to point out something about the brightsparks forum (http://forum.brightsparks.com.sg). The forum is a place with lots of helpful people who are willing to answer your questions, but helpful people are not the same as informative people or people with inside information or people already in the system. I have unwittingly misled people before on the forum (and stand corrected), and I have been misled multiple times by moderators or long-time posters. That's why they have the disclaimer after their signature:
"Disclaimer: Any advice offered by myself or other moderators / forum members on this forum is just that - mere advice. Neither BrightSparks nor we give any illusion that the information provided is definitive, and take no responsibility for any consequences."

Some of them give advice for scholarships that they were rejected by, and some are no more than 1 or 2 years older than you, maybe even the same age as you. So yes, you can ask questions or whatever there but PLEASE TAKE ALL ADVICE THERE WITH A PINCH OF SALT, because many things on the forum on brightsparks have been either factually wrong, logically wrong, anecdotally wrong or whatever and sometimes no one will correct it.

Since I am on this note about disclaimers, let me reiterate again to you, my dear readers, that just like the brightsparks moderators, any advice that the collegetalk writers offer is just "mere advice" and we will not give you any illusion that the information provided is definitive. Haha! :)