Everyone out there

If you're a student in whatever place, I'll suggest making electronic copies of all your certificates, testimonials, school transcripts, awards, whatever not which could potentially give you bragging rights in a scholarship or university application, as soon as you receive them. And store them all in a place where you can find them in your computer in an organized way. You can scan them in and pdf your documents, or take photos and arrange them on Word of you don’t have easy access to a scanner. Doing up a proper resume will help also; it will come in handy if you’re applying for internships and the like. Some organizations would appreciate it if you’re sending a huge pile of papers, so they can have a summary of everything in one glance.

Over the years, you’ll be asked to make copies of your school results, testimonials, to apply for all sorts of things, from exchange programmes, JC scholarships, internships, etc. It’ll be a lot easier if you have the soft copy of everything and can just click “print!”, instead of laboriously standing in front of a photocopy machine for hours and painstakingly inputting the pages one by one, not to mention having to take your documents out of their folders, putting them back in the right places, making sure you haven’t missed anything out. Or even better, some organizations now allow applicants to email them electronic copies of their certificates. And if you are so unlucky as to lose an original document, having the electronic copy would probably make requesting a new certificate a lot easier from whatever awarding body.

When I applied for scholarships, I had to send in copies of my schools results, NUS High School Diploma, Award certificates, CCA records, University acceptance letters, ICs, Passport, testimonials, and O-Level certificates. This added up to a huge stack of paper, so for each application I made, I wasted about ½ a stack of standard A4 paper ream. One day I was so tired of photocopying again and again that I spent one whole day scanning everything in properly and organizing my stuff.

Read the guidelines carefully when mailing in documents; some organizations request applicants to use only paper clips and not staples. If you’re sending a thick stack of paper in, like a copy of your NUS High diploma, you’ll rather use bull clips, not the twisted metal ones which can only hold a few sheets. They're available cheaply in most bookstores.