Pengalaman UEE NTU (+Pengumuman)

            WARNING: I’m gonna write in English, as I need myself getting used to writing in English. Hope you can grasp the meaning of this post.

            Nanyang Technological University (NTU) is a Singapore public government university, besides  National University of Singapore (NUS) and Singapore Management University (SMU). Yes, since Singaporean appreciate merit, these kind of public universities are more reputable than private ones (e.g. SIM, PSB, James Cook) *no offense*. If you’re admitted by one of them, in this case NTU (because I’m only talking about NTU in this post), then I guess you must be smart enough. The reason why NTU only pick the best ones is because their rank in QS World University is… ah, I can’t tell. Go look up for it in Google, and you’ll find yourself astonished.

            What I want to tell here is that I attended NTU’s University Entrance Examination (UEE) once. Once in a lifetime, as you can’t resit for UEE if you have failed the previous one. First things first, I registered for admission by online, and submitted my senior high school transcript, birth certificate, and so on. Then, what I had to do next is to keep my dad’s credit card handy (yes, I need twenty bucks to complete my registration). It was tiresome, but who wouldn’t drop a sweat to enter one of the decent universities in the world?

            The next thing is announcement. On 31^st December 2015, I was celebrating New Year’s Eve with my family when my phone vibrated. GODDAMIT. From adm_intl@ntu.edu.sg. Now I know that Singaporean are so punctual that they announced the document selection outcome even before the date they promised. I didn’t need to be a keen reader to know what the mail was about. The email stated that I had the right to participate in UEE, and it would be held in Jubilee School Jakarta. I barely laugh. I didn’t treat it as if it was a huge victory, either. The real war started on 30^th-31^st January 2016!

            I realized that I had to prepare well for the UEE. No surprise, I had kept my mind straight on the material (my tablet, to be exact, since I only studied A-Level material from e-books and past papers) since August 2015. Then, I learned more, merely because I didn’t want to look dumb during the exam (other participants were as genius as William James Sidis, maybe?). During January, my mind only consisted of: vector, trigonometry, differential equations, complex number, and even quantum physics. It would be cumbersome to put all of it, so I only wrote the snippet of what my mind thought of.  Then, my routine was: waking up – going to school – going home – A-Level – sleeping – repeat.

            Let’s go straightforward to the exam. I’m going to summarize the exams:

            Day 1:

            Mathematics: Since I picked Physics as my first choice and none of my choices consisted of Social Studies (e.g. Business, Accountancy), the Mathematics was A-Level, not AO-Level. AO-Level was much easier. That was two hour test, and we were given five questions. Only five?

            Nope, I was joking. The question was like: 1a, 1b (i), 1b (ii), 1b (iii),…, 1b(xxxi). Nevermind,  I cracked another joke at the last part.

             The questions were… horrible, maleficent, annoying, and… uh (but I still could do the exam, with major carelessness). But, above all, the last question irritated me the most. Sorry, I didn’t remember the question.

            English: Mad Dog level. The text was two and half page length. I realized that English in Indonesian curriculum is mediocre compared to this. Then, I had to complete the text, without the words given. Man. Although I felt like I did well in writing, the other parts were so torturing.

            Day 2:

            Physics: The multiple choices consisted of thirty questions, and there were four Qs for essay. Mostly, the MCQs asked nonsense concept (I couldn’t even think logically. Was it just my brain or the MCQs were too crazy?). The essay went well, tho.

            On 5^th March 2016, they sent the application outcome by email (damn, they were so punctual, again). And guess what? I was not admitted. Disappointment and agony filled my mind at first, but quickly vanished. Nothing to lose, I guess. I did my best, but I was just not as lucky as others. And then I remembered this quote:

            “A person who never made a mistake, never tried anything new.” – Albert Einstein.

            We could say that nothing ends in vain.

            The next post will be about H2 Math sample questions.