I've always dreamed of becoming an astronaut / a doctor / a footballer / Permanent Secretary (Environment and Water Resources)

If you're a bright, 18-year old Singaporean JC2 student thinking about taking up a government scholarship (i.e. any scholarship that comes with a bond attached) to study overseas, here's some food for thought.

Why do you want a scholarship? I can think of three possible responses. A lot of students give more than one:

1) "My parents can't afford to pay for a Harvard / Cambridge / Oxford / MIT / Stanford / Cornell / Dartmouth education." This is most commonly mentioned by students to their friends and teachers, occasionally during the scholarship interview.

2) "I really want to work for the government / A*Star / EDB / SPH." This is most commonly mentioned during the scholarship interview.

3) "It'll look good on my CV." This is never mentioned.

And here are some thoughts on them, starting with reason #3.

3) Yes, it does look good on your CV. But a lot of other things do as well -- like interning for Goldman Sachs during your freshman summer, or getting your undergraduate research paper published in a major scientific journal, or graduating summa cum laude. The point is that having received a scholarship from the Singapore government isn't going to seal your admission to the University of Chicago's Committee on Social Thought or a job at Microsoft after your bond expires (or even before that, if you decide to break it); at most it'll guarantee you a cushy job in the administrative service. Did you really grow up wanting to be a...civil servant? I can even imagine that some institutions may not look too favourably upon government scholars because of certain values which the Singapore civil service places importance on. If you want to work for The New Republic, six years at the Straits Times spent toeing the PAP line isn't going to cut the mustard.

1) This is a good reason if it's paired with reason #2. A lot of parents don't have the means to pay for three or four years at a private US or British university; four years at Dartmouth, for instance, cost around $160,000. But a government scholarship is only one of three ways of paying for an overseas education. You can get financial aid from the university you're applying to, or you could secure an overseas study loan from a local bank. Both these other means, however, have their problems. With the exception of a few really rich US universities, most US and all British universities offer only limited financial support to international students. If you're an international student applying to Dartmouth or Stanford, for example, your ability to pay will affect your chances of getting in. The more you need, the harder it'll be. Financial aid may also take the form of loans, which of course have to be paid back, just like bank loans, with interest.

2) Even if you are generally supportive of the government, you've got to have some idea of what working for them is really like from day to day. Ask friends and family who work in the civil service or GLCs to give you unvarnished descriptions of their jobs, and do the same for people in the private sector. Which group seems happier? What sort of tasks do they perform from day to day, week to week, month to month, and year to year? What are their colleagues and bosses like? Now it may just happen that the opinions you receive on life in the civil service are really positive (although I can't imagine this). You still need to ask yourself if, at the age of 18, you really know what you want in life. Very few JC2 students, I think, can answer this question with absolute certainty, if only because they've had relatively little experience of the world at their age. That's why you go to university -- and here I'm thinking of an American liberal arts education. You might find out that you're gifted at acting and want to become an actor. You might decide after a Wall Street internship that investment banking (yawn!) turns you on. Or, like me, you might discover that you love history and want to become an historian. In other words, it's unreasonable and silly of the government to force 18-year olds to commit six years of their lives to the civil service or some stat board, when the students have neither any idea of what it's really like to work in the government, nor had any opportunity to sample other careers. While it is true that you'll still be able to pursue these careers after you leave the civil service, why risk six years of your life that you could be spending doing something that you really want?

That's all for now. I'll talk more about my experiences at a later date.
Posted by kungfuzi at 1:14 am |