osim:

mensch:

[quote=\"dreamerz718\"]Is it too challenging to take SATs after Os instead? I'm afraid I might not have time in JC

Hi dreamerz,

Many students take the SATs during JC so it should be manageable. Another way for you to gauge for yourself is to do a few practice tests, which are available online at sites like the College Board's (it creates and administers the SAT).

Generally Singaporean students cover sufficient concepts to tackle the math section by the time they finish O levels. As for the Writing and Reading sections, those are not based on say the English, Lit, or GP syllabus in school, but your command of English (vocab, grammar rules, argumentation) needs to be fairly strong if you want to get a top score. So if the practice test shows you could use some time building up your English competency, then it might even make more sense to take the SAT in JC1 or JC2.

Cheers.

Hi,

If you take the test multiple times, can you use your best score or must use latest score?[/quote]Hi,

You can choose to only send the the scores from the overall best test date, but I believe many of the top colleges require applicants to submit scores from all test dates.

What they then do with that varies by college. Some might only look at one sitting, while others will consider the best combination of individual section scores across multiple test dates.

dreamerz718:

Is it too challenging to take SATs after Os instead? I'm afraid I might not have time in JC

Hi dreamerz,

Many students take the SATs during JC so it should be manageable. Another way for you to gauge for yourself is to do a few practice tests, which are available online at sites like the College Board's (it creates and administers the SAT).

Generally Singaporean students cover sufficient concepts to tackle the math section by the time they finish O levels. As for the Writing and Reading sections, those are not based on say the English, Lit, or GP syllabus in school, but your command of English (vocab, grammar rules, argumentation) needs to be fairly strong if you want to get a top score. So if the practice test shows you could use some time building up your English competency, then it might even make more sense to take the SAT in JC1 or JC2.

Cheers.

Hi Lavina


Not an easy job (being the parent or the tutor! ), but here are some suggestions.

For the essays, if what your son is missing is evidence, you could ask the tutor to point him toward some good, quick sources, where he can read up about topics he's interested in. These could be books with compilations of quotes or famous speeches, or even websites of periodicals like The Economist that cover current issues with more depth and context.

The step up from writing mostly narrative English essays in secondary school to writing about intellectual and political issues in GP is quite substantial. Many kids do feel a little overwhelmed. Perhaps after some initial spoonfeeding of ideas and quotes from the tutor, your son can then progress to putting together his own lists of examples.

Discussing articles is important because the comprehension paper has a large 10 mark \"instant response\" short essay at the end, where the students have to write intelligently about the passage they're given.

However, there are also lots of standalone questions in the comprehension that involve paraphrasing and summary skills. So if he's not getting much practice on that, could ask tutor to do some work with him on that too.

Best of luck!

This link might be of some help for NUS biz and econs requirements. It appears that H1 Math should be ok.


http://bba.nus.edu/dualdegree_economics.html

That said, agree with quintessential mum about the importance of H2 Math. You have also seen this yourself in your research. For better or worse, social sciences are very into the quantitative approach nowadays, so even if H2 Math is not absolutely required, maintaining that level of engagement can help you in future work.

Business courses can involve a fair bit of math too, so again the H2 Math would be useful. If you managed to work hard and get the A2 for O level A Maths, you definitely have the potential to do fine for A level H2 Math too. Might just be a sacrifice you need to make for the sake of your intellectual and career interest.

Good luck!

Two areas you can start working on are 1) content and 2) structure of argumentative essays.


For content, you can do an online search or flip through past year GP papers to get a sense of essay question types. There’s a broad range but many of them concern ethics, politics, local challenges and thoughts about the humanities and sciences. This will give you a sense of issues to follow. Then you can look out for them in online newspaper headlines or watch related videos that interest you on sites like TED.com, Fora.tv and BigThink.com.

For structure, it’s basically an expansion of the few months’ worth of argumentative essays you would have covered in Sec 3 or 4. It’s meant to be a bridge toward academic writing, with long(er) paragraphs, topic sentences, and detailed analysis of examples. You can find sample essays online and also read opinion columns from world newspapers and magazines like Time and the Economist.

Hope that helps!

Lilac66:

haha, nice to get it from the horse's mouth. So it's a safe bet to say most opted for the civil service?

Probably not \"most\" as in over 50% but a good number from back then. Things may have changed, though, as scholarships became more fragmented and the gep intakes grew.

Also, back in the day, there were only 3 schools when geps went on to secondary and two of them have produced a good number of government leaders, so hard not to have role models and \"legendary achievers\" be a certain \"type\", which in turn led to a sizable number choosing the govt work route.

Hopefully information on all options is more widely available to kids today

How far back would you like to know? Those in my batch turn 31 this year. A good share are government scholars (all sorts, army and police, policy writers, researchers, teachers etc) and doctors. Couple lawyers. Some with better information and resources headed for the private sector at some point after graduation (consulting, banking). And of course a few oddballs

The Economist is fine. Most established sources are fine. You can also try following the blogs of famous professors and journalists or even their twitter feeds, which often link to good articles.


Main thing is to not be intimidated by the \"cheem-ness\". Observe how these sources develop the arguments and keep things simple so a general audience can understand.

Videos are an amazing resource nowadays. Definitely good for those who don't like reading too much

Feel free to reach out if you need help!

Hi delulytric, just want to add on for your GP concerns, you don't necessarily have to go spend money on material right away. Dipping into current news is of course helpful but more than just factual recounts, you need analysis. You can find samples of this in the Opinion and Commentary sections of the Straits Times and the websites of other known news sources like The New York Times and the BBC.


Another area to try which involves even less reading is a handful of intellectual conference sites. These include TED.com, BigThink.com, and Fora.TV. Lots of excellent videos from world experts, mostly for free. You can download and listen / watch on the go too.

Hope that helps and best of luck!

Agree with verykiasu2010’s thoughts on the JC Econs teacher’s comments. For whatever reason, the amount of content to cover for H1 Econs is not too different from that of H2 Econs (it’s basically one chapter from J1). So in a sense, H1 Econs is not necessarily easier, although the A level questions tend to be ever so slightly more straightforward for the H1 paper.


It’s a little hard to tell if a student will have a "flair" for Econs. In some ways, there isn’t that much overlap with History and SS because there’s less memorization, no questioning of sources, and more emphasis on application of theory and models rather than knowing facts. I would compare it to writing a variety of science lab reports, including data interpretation.

As for Lit, there are indeed students who take A level Lit without O level Lit. Strength in English language doesn’t necessarily mean strength in Lit, though. It is possible to study for the prepared texts but digesting and writing meaningfully about the unseen poems is tough.