JC or Poly?

[Matthias Ng]

janet88:

my boy took the poly route as he is keen in engineering. he went to MI for a short period and couldn't adjust to the syllabus. several of his classmates from secondary school went to the Aeronautical engineering at SP.

in fact majority of the boys are in the engineering courses while some of the girls went to NP for media course.

for those who do not know what field they want to enter, the JC path allows them to decide because they have 2 years and there are more avenues to enter.

I beg to differ. This argument about \"going poly if you know what you want to do\" is really outdated. Go to a school which allows you to score and do your best (i.e. which type of learning environment suits your child better).

There are many courses in university where the % placement for poly students is much lower. For example, chemical engineering. So, an O Level student who likes chemical engineering and thus decides to go to poly might just miss his/her chance if they do not have a near perfect poly GPA.

[Ken Chan]

JC

[janet88]

i believe it all boils to the child…he/she is the one studying. as parents we can only advise but support the decision made.


when son ultimately decided on the poly, we gave him our full support…the condition i set is if he chooses poly which is 3 years long, he must get into the dean’s list and enter local U.

[bernice04]

My daughter is aiming to become a psychiatrist. We are exploring the options to 1) JC or 2) Polytechnic. I understand that she needs to go to medical school and complete her basic degree then she will proceed with her Master Doc degree.

I would like to find out if she opts for Poly route, which course should she take to apply for NUS/NTU Medical program or she should goes into JC to take her ‘A’ level?
TIA!

[jtoh]

bernice04:

My daughter is aiming to become a psychiatrist. We are exploring the options to 1) JC or 2) Polytechnic. I understand that she needs to go to medical school and complete her basic degree then she will proceed with her Master Doc degree.

I would like to find out if she opts for Poly route, which course should she take to apply for NUS/NTU Medical program or she should goes into JC to take her 'A' level?
TIA!

I would say do her A levels in JC then proceed to medical school. It's a more direct route and the medicine intake for local unis is still mostly JC students. They have upped the number of students coming in from Poly but it's still very limited. Last year's intake from Poly was 11, according to the local newspapers. This is for both NUS and NTU. Most of the students studied biomedical sciences so that might be the course to take up should your daughter want to take the poly route.

[OnionRings]

bernice04:

My daughter is aiming to become a psychiatrist. We are exploring the options to 1) JC or 2) Polytechnic. I understand that she needs to go to medical school and complete her basic degree then she will proceed with her Master Doc degree.

I would like to find out if she opts for Poly route, which course should she take to apply for NUS/NTU Medical program or she should goes into JC to take her 'A' level?
TIA!

I applied to NUS YLLSoM during their application exercise and was given a placing in Life Science. To put things in perspective, I graduate from Polytechnic with a Diploma with merit in Biomedical Science. One senior of mine was accepted into YLL. My GPA was higher than hers and I was very much involved in research. If you look at the IGP of NUS Medicine, you'll notice that only a handful of Polytechnic students are accepted into the programme, compared to their JC counterparts. If she is really aiming to be a psychiatrist, she has a higher chance of being accepted to YLL by going through the JC route.

As for specialising in Psychiatry, there is a selection speciality during medical school (if I'm not wrong) and there are still more steps after.

[interestedstuchd]

Hi! I am a Secondary 2 student who is stuck when it comes to choosing jc or poly because my school stresses the importance of planning post-secondary . My subject combination that I will be doing in Secondary 3 is triple science a math and combined humanities and basic subjects .


I want to go to jc after my olevels because from what i heard, it is an easier path to pursuing medicine, but i dont have any family members who are familiar with the jc route so they usually have no advice as to where i should go. Can anyone tell me how jc is like?

I would not mind going to poly but ive read some articles about the number of poly intakes into local universities or specifically medicine which is about 1 student!!

Please do help me weigh my options! TIA :idea:

[6thisnthat9]

Jc is lecture-tutorial class format like uni. No more teachers monitoring whether you did your homework or … copy from friends. You gain more independence, … from long ago, not sure if it’s still the same… some kids lost their way from their new found freedom, and did badly in first year, but managed to catch up by A level, but some kids didn’t.


Jc teaches concept, more abstract. At least for 2 maths it was like that then. You may want to ask yourself, do you grab concept easily?

I was told it is more true now than before, the two, jc and poly, no longer differ by rate of success in life.

I note that those from poly and later join uni will be very savvy in their course of work in terms of application. But as they rep the top of their cohort, these are correlated. In some courses, some topics in their first year in uni is just refresher for them. However, by 1 year or so, many jc students will catch up.

To note: i m not from medicine course and no experience in poly.

[ChiefKiasu]

Yes, JC is really the precursor to university and there is a tendency for students to get caught up with the "new-found" freedom and lose themselves. Some wake up by Year 2 to start catching up and others just give up. I spent 10 years in the same Primary and Secondary school, but I still remember my 2 years at JC because it is so fun and memorable.


During my time, we have little to no disrespect for polys, but going from poly to University is very tough (less than 5% of poly students make it to the University). Poly education is almost like University education for most students that go there. It is seen as the more down-to-earth option for students who prefer to work during their work lives while University tends to be more for those that prefer a more academc approach. Not sure if that view has changed from my time.

[zac's mum]

interestedstuchd:

Hi! I am a Secondary 2 student who is stuck when it comes to choosing jc or poly because my school stresses the importance of planning post-secondary . My subject combination that I will be doing in Secondary 3 is triple science a math and combined humanities and basic subjects .


I want to go to jc after my olevels because from what i heard, it is an easier path to pursuing medicine, but i dont have any family members who are familiar with the jc route so they usually have no advice as to where i should go. Can anyone tell me how jc is like?

I would not mind going to poly but ive read some articles about the number of poly intakes into local universities or specifically medicine which is about 1 student!!

Please do help me weigh my options! TIA :idea:

I was in very similar subject Combi as you - 25 years ago.

To have been given this subject Combi, it means your lower sec Science was very strong. However, beware that u only have 1 humanities (combined) which you MUST count in your L1R5 score. I took pure Geography (which is the closest to science) and ended up with a B3 (below my expectation) I was forced to count that and it dragged down my overall score. I’m not sure how easy combined humanities exam will be.

Also beware that one of the science may drag u down, eg my Bio and Chem were good but Physics not so good. Again it dragged down my score.

BUT I think the main factor whether u go to JC or Poly is your English and Mother Tongue!!! How good are they? If they are bad, then u are destined for Poly, sad to say. It happened to my hubby. He’s good at studying, but unfortunately English and Chinese are poor. So he went to Poly and studied Biotech. Worked very hard in Poly and topped his cohort - it is a very hard slog to break thru and get those top results to enter Uni after that. You are right it is doubly and triply hard for Poly grads to enter Uni Med courses. If your languages allow to get L1R5 to qualify for JC, definitely go to JC (where u do either double Science or triple Science Combi to qualify for future Uni Medicine).

Both JC and Poly lesson formats are big mass lecture + smaller tutorial classes. It’s just that JC has a tighter reign on school discipline (attendance especially) and compulsory CCA too. JC only has 2 short years for u to adapt while Poly has 3 years and modular topical format more similar to Uni.