Scholarships

30 top SPM students get national scholarships

Since when did the government have so much money to sponsor so many more students under different scholarships? First we had the PSD/JPA scholarships, where everyone with strings of A1's would sign up and keep their fingers crossed that they would get a place in the scholarship lists.

Then came the Minister's interview, in which he said that students could go back to him for another hearing if they did well in their pre-uni course and secured an unconditional offer from top unis around the world. So we had the Ivy League scholarship programme after that.

And now this new National Scholarship. Yes, the numbers may be small [only 30 students are going] but what is the point of the whole idea? Why not just let them join the queue for JPA scholarships? I'm pretty sure they'd get a place. What if they don't want to study abroad in a fit of patriotism? How would you manage the extra seats?

On a side note, it seems that there are a lot of girls in the top 30, as well as a lot of Chinese and Malay names. I wonder whether this adequately reflects the distribution of brains in the country.