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 31st 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 30th-31st
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 5th
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.
I've applied for NTU just now, and I'm looking forward to read people's experiences, especially those from Indonesia. Thanks for the encouragement!
ReplyDeleteUEE nya NUS sama NTU itu cukup sekali saja atau ikut di kedua universitas??
ReplyDelete