Hi, first and foremost I’m not a parent I’m a secondary four student. I’m so desperate for information that I’m actually posting on a KIASU parent website haha. I’ve attended the talen academy when I was P6 but failed to get in, and here I am trying again. needless to say, my past failure has really been creeping up on me and making me feel very uncomfortable, unsure if I should even try again.


anyway, I am taking my o’levels this year and am currently considering applying for DSA to Sota this june through Dance (ballet) I have a few questions on the school as well as admission because the information provided on the SOTA website is rather confusing to me as it mentions mostly on P6 students only.

1. Is there a large amount of students who are accepted through DSA every year? (based on the students currently studying there, do they find that there are alot of transfer students?)

2. How hard is it to actually get in? they make it sound like the difficulty level is really high and you’ve really gotta be the cream of the crop to get in.

3. How is a typical classical ballet class like? ( we have to attend one during the audition)

4. Is the written essay in the talent academy something that I have to study for beforehand? is it expository in nature or is it something which we can be more creative with and come up with our own stories etc.

5. Is it very stressful in sota? (in terms of keeping up academically)

6. Is it a must to take english literature to be legible for DSA because I currently am not taking it.


The main reason I’ve decided to try SOTA again is because I have a strong passion in dance, however I face the difficulty of expressing this especially with the demands of normal school plus cca ( I take dance outside as well). In school, we are expected to perform well as a student and a dancer (cca is dance).

Last year when we were training for the SYF I danced for up to 16 hours a week including my regular classes outside, on top of that I still had to juggle the heavy load of school work. my days could stretch from 6am when I wake up all the way to 8/9pm when i finish dance classes. I barely manage to squeeze in some time for tuition. This year is my final year and my school had organized a concert just 2 weeks before our mid years, four weeks before our chinese o levels. My grade 8 RAD ballet exam was the week after the concert. the first four months of the year was burned just like that. My results took a major beating from all this.

In light of all this, do you think I should DSA into SOTA? it just seems like a more sensible choice to me.