Kloggy:

Does anyone know if there are any CCA or other school activities on Saturday ? If there is, what is the timing like ?

yes. sports may hold CCAs on saturdays for trainings in the morning. I'm not so sure about clubs, societies, performing arts, but I'm pretty sure they tend to increase frequency of CCA sessions near competition periods, so they may eat up saturdays even though normal sessions do not include saturdays.

turquoise:

micko07:

As an ex-NYGH student:

Yes our Chinese is difficult but its definitely managable. I'm terrible at Chinese, didn't like the subject at all but somehow passed out with an A2 in HCL. The teachers in NY are generally very friendly and if they sense that you are struggling, you can attend consultation/ after school remedial. This applies to all other subjects as well. I don't know how cheem DHS/RVHS' standard is though. And yeah, I've heard stories about tutors turning NYGH students down, mainly cause parents might baulk at the relatively \"poor\" marks. Again, it boils down to effort.
I've talked about NY on previous threads but in a nutshell, I think it's a great school. Depends on what your child is like but I think I personally flourished better in NY because the atmosphere is less competitive and gave me more time to mature. Even though I was quite disappointed to be rejected by RGS, I'm very glad I chose not to appeal after PSLE. There is no \"popular\" CCA in NY, the distribution across Sports, Arts, Uniformed Groups and Clubs is pretty even. You have to pass the trials for sports and arts though.
As an ex-DSAer (Graduated Class of 2008), I think NYGH explicitly states that there are looking for people with talent in:
Leadership
Sports
Perf. Arts
Academics
I didn't dabble in Sports at all, was Gr 5 (at that time) in Piano + Theory, top of my cohort since P4 and the kind of \"de facto\" Brownie leader because there were hardly any senior students left. I didn't win anything like SMO medals or big competitions though and neither was I from GEP (I hail from Ai Tong). I was informed through a call but that was eons ago. And yup, there is definitely an interview. They asked me questions in both Chinese and English (I remember the Vice-Principal asking me why I wanted to go to Nanyang).
Again, feel free to ask any questions on NYGH! :DD I love selling my school, even with all its flaws.
@ NatTifMummy Congrats! Do consider letting her attend NYGH, I convinced another mother to apply for DSA last year and her daughter is now in NY and loving it.

Thanks for the info mick007. It's great to hear it from an old girl's point of view. When you say your chinese was terrible, how terrible was it? If you didn't do HCL at primary school, is HCL at NYGH manageable?

hi I am another ex NYGH girl,

I did HCL in Primary school, scored Merit in PSLE and nearly failed chinese in Sec 1. Through out the 4 years, I'd say I averaged around a B3/B4, and ended up scoring a C5 in my Prelims, though I scored an A2 in O levels.

HCL in NYGH is not exactly easy, because they expect you to do independent learning. Moreover, when it comes to Sec 3 and 4, you do cultural studies, like study *rubbish* such as china history in chinese which is not graded but is reflected in your report. Not exactly very useful unless you are bicultural studies student.

The thing about languages is that you have to use it frequently. So if you're in an english speaking family, you might consider sending your child for tuition if he/she has limited attention span in Chinese lessons (which I fufilled both). I went to Liang Wern Fook's tuition centre, and I think they were fantastic.

Maybe you want to see how well she copes with HCL before sending her in for tuition. I only started tuition in Sec 2.