Who should write your recommendation letter?

US universities generally require two teacher recommendations and one counselor recommendation.

For the teacher recommendations, you should ask NUSHS teachers who have taught you, preferably in Year 5 or Year 6. If you're taking NUS classes and want to get recs from the NUS professor, I will still recommend that you ask NUSHS teachers because your relationship with them is probably closer and thus they will write more meaningful recs. I took NUS courses but I hardly interacted with my NUS professors. However, I was always in contact with my NUSHS teachers through classes, consultations, extracurricular activities.

Many NUSHS students conduct research at external organizations like A*Star research institutions or at NUS. If you have a close relationship with your research mentor, you can ask him to write a supplementary recommendation letter. This recommendation will not be submitted through the Common App system and it does not need to be confidential. The easiest way is, your prof writes the letter with his organization's emblem and you send it to all the schools via fax or snail mail.

From Cal Tech's website: http://www.admissions.caltech.edu/faqs#recommendations
Do you accept supplementary recommendation letters?
Yes. If you have conducted research, we strongly encourage you to submit a letter of recommendation from your mentor. You also may submit other recommendation letters if they add information to your application that we would have not otherwise known.

Can recommenders send the recommendations via email?
Recommendation letters should be submitted either via the online Common Application [Fiona: Supp recs can't be sent via Common App] or via regular mail. We do not accept letters of recommendation via e-mail.

Common App.

It's been quite a while since I posted (busy lately), today I will talk about the common app and filling it up. (Please note that this is based on what I filled up, the school may have another updated way of filling now - I dont know since I am not in the school, in any case please check with the college counsellors.)

Many US colleges use the common app. This is because all the colleges will need your particulars, list of activities, grades, etc anyway. The common app is like a standard form where you only need to fill all that up once, and you can send it to all the other US colleges at a go with the click of a button and the keying in of your credit card number.

You may ask, how do the colleges then ask questions specific about their college then? They ask them in their supplement. Most colleges have their supplements, which is like another form where you fill in information specific to the college's needs.

First, create an account. Then, add the schools that you might be interested in. Most colleges use the common app, so you should be able to find them. Some notable colleges that do not use the common app however, are schools like MIT and the UC-schools. Please feel free to comment about other notable schools which dont use the common app (I didnt apply to caltech etc so I wouldnt know).





You can change each application for each school on the common app if you want. Unlike UCAS (where the moment you click send you are sending your application to all schools) for the common app you can send the information individually to each school, making it easier for usage.

Okay so let's start. There are quite a few sections to fill. Personal data, address and family should be easy to fill.

Academics should be easy to fill too, go ask either Mr. Allan or Ms. Sng what their extension numbers are. Current year courses - fill in the year 6 modules that you are taking/took. So for me in the "First Semester" column I filled in "Public Speaking and Presentation", "Functions and Adaptations", "Calculus III" and "Statistics III". For "Second Semester" I filled in all my modules for the 2nd semester of course.

Under Honors, fill in up to a maximum of 5 awards that you have received (well of course you fill in your most outstanding ones). Such awards include SSEF, EAGLES award, OSAP, Olympiad medals, book prizes if you want.

Standardized tests - fill in all your SAT/ACT scores and AP scores. TOEFL as well if you have taken them. If you are wondering if you need to take it, for Singaporean students the answer is no.

By the way, if you are having no luck with getting a good score on the SAT, you may want to consider the ACT. http://www.actstudent.org/regist/index.html Do remember though that just like the SAT the ACT also has a deadline that you have to register by. And because it is less popular than the SAT in Singapore there are a lot less testing days as well.

Activities - fill up your CCAs and other stuff you do outside! For work experience dont worry if you dont have any, most Singaporeans dont.

Writing: AHA, ESSAY TIME. I will talk about essays in a separate post. Put whatever info you want in the additional info box (it is really optional, some people dont write anything there). I dont recommend that you upload any documents because some schools dont read the document you upload (cos they dont have time!). Just type it in the box, if you cant fit all your info in there it's probably too long. Dont write very important stuff there too, I do wonder sometimes if they really read it.

And then submit. Yay!