EducationUSA Weekly Update, #361, January 13, 2014
The-Straits-Times-Project-Access
1. Mentors to help students get into top
unis
PUBLISHED 1 HOUR AGO
S'pore students at Oxford launch non-profit Project Access here
Rei Kurohi (mailto:rkurohi@sph.com.sg)
Graduating students at a service before the 365th Commencement Exercises at Harvard University in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, US, on May 26. PHOTO: REUTERS
Students from junior colleges and polytechnics that are under-represented in top British and American
universities now have a network of mentors to help them get into such institutions.
THE STRAITS TIMES
2. Singaporean students at the University of Oxford launched the non-profit Project Access in Singapore
officially on June 4.
The initiative matches prospective students with mentors in their desired schools based on their fields of
study. More than 50 Singaporean students in universities such as Oxford, the London School of Economics
(LSE) and Harvard University have signed up as mentors.
They come from a variety of pre-university backgrounds and will be matched with prospective students
with similar backgrounds.
One such mentor is Mr Sim Jing En, 23, who graduated from Ngee Ann Polytechnic with a diploma with
merit in Tourism and Resort Management. He is now a first-year law student at Cambridge.
He said: "I received guidance from career counsellors provided by Ngee Ann on my applications to the law
faculty of NUS and other local schools when I graduated. I applied to Cambridge on a whim in my second
year of national service, without any guidance from Ngee Ann.
"Some of my juniors told me they didn't include Oxford or Cambridge because they wanted to be realistic
about their limited choice of five schools which they can put in the UCAS application system."
The Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) is a Britain-based centralised portal for
applications to universities there.
Mr Sim attributes his acceptance to luck, as he had nobody to vet his entrance essays or coach him for the
Cambridge law entrance examination and interview.
He had been happy with the offer to study law at the National University of Singapore and just wanted the
rejection letter from Cambridge to show that he had tried.
Instead, he got in and his "mental barriers" collapsed. He said many more polytechnic students could enter
top foreign universities if they get over the idea that it is impossible.
He is part of the core Singapore team of Project Access and is in talks with all five polytechnics here to hold
sessions to share information about the application process and life at Cambridge from the perspective of a
polytechnic student.
Beyond giving essay comments and interview tips, mentors will also share their personal experiences in
applying to their universities.
Mr Charig Yang, 19, who completed his A levels at Nanyang Junior College last year, was among the first to
benefit from Project Access.
He got into an engineering course at Oxford with the help of Mr Lim Jian Hong, a senior from the same JC
who is also studying engineering there.
Mr Yang, who has signed up to be a mentor, said: "He told me what to work on for the admissions test as
some British syllabus topics are not taught here. He also shared the past year paper's answers, which was
really helpful because Oxford publishes only the question papers."
