The World and Everything in It by Shaun Tan

Author:Shaun Tan [Tan, Shaun]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shaun Tan
Published: 2016-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-SIX

Singapore

At a certain point during James’ final year of Junior College, the university hype went into overdrive. It began as a trickle at first, with just a few of the keener kids discussing their applications, and then it became a flood, with students obsessing about admissions rates and stressing out over applications. Kids suddenly began to rush to acquire and read books related to the course they were planning to apply for to prepare for personal statements and interviews. The Singaporean girls were typically the most stressed-out, since most of the Singaporean boys would go on to National Service in between high school and university and so had an extra two years to apply, but there was plenty of anxiety to go around.

Raffles Junior College itself organized a host of services: they had a series of info sessions, private consultations with admissions counselors, and officials from various universities stopped by during their regional roadshows.

Many students applied to local universities, though the UK was the most popular choice, and there were also many others who applied to the US and Australia. Despite the strong reputation of Singapore’s universities and its vaunted world-class education system, people in Singapore (like those in several other Asian countries) still regarded reputable Western universities as more prestigious, and in Singapore prestige was everything, all the more so when it came to this most important of things. Cambridge University in particular occupied a special place in Singapore society. Which was unsurprising, James thought. Most Singaporeans sat Cambridge Board examinations exclusively, and Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father and first prime minister of Singapore spent his formative years at Cambridge, as did his son, Lee Hsien Loong, the current prime minister. For a Singaporean, getting into Cambridge was therefore not just another achievement: it was an intellectual pilgrimage back to the source, back to the place it all began.

And of course, nowhere was this more keenly felt than at Raffles, the great genius factory that was famous for sending more students to elite universities than any other school in the world, including the most exclusive private schools of England and America.

His father, as usual, had no end of things to say about his university choices. He gave him the same advice he’d given Louisa, who was now a first year at Imperial College London, studying Mathematics with Statistics. “University’s a formality,” he said, ‘you won’t use most of what you learn there anyway. The sooner you get it done, the better.” A degree was more of just a thing you got to show everyone else you weren’t retarded. “It’s the prestige of the institution that matters,” he said, “and the contacts you make when you’re there: both of these things will increase your options and opportunities in life.”

James had mulled the idea of applying to the US – there were more prestigious universities over there after all, and the liberal arts system certainly kept your options open – before deciding against it. Whilst he did well in

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