Second interview: NUS ASEAN Scholarship

Hi, readers. It is quite a joy to see that my blog has reached more than 200 pageviews while I was away doing... many stuff. Perhaps, even from the first sentence, you would have noticed my... less enthusiastic tone  compared to my previous posts. Well, you guessed it, it's because of my second of the series of interview I am going to have this year did not go well. 

Perhaps you are wondering, what is the big deal? You said you screwed up your SUTD interview and yet you were still offered a place there, why this time would be any different? Well, I do not know if I have told you guys this (too lazy to check on the post itself, sorry), but SUTD interview was for both admission and scholarship. While I was offered a place in SUTD, I was not offered any scholarship with the admission offer. You could say that I am satisfactory for admission, but not for scholarship. Even worse, it is possible that I am actually not satisfactory, but it is just that SUTD needs students really, really badly, such that they accepted students even if they are not quite above their standard. If you think I am exaggerating, or having some kind of inferiority complex (I actually suspect I am) but I have some evidences. Screenshot below is from an e-mail I received a few days ago. Note that some of my friends also got the same mail.

More background info:
in the first offer letter I received last month,
it is written that the deadline of acceptance was on  19 April

So, what do you think is the reason behind the seemingly desperate e-mail urging us to go for the matriculation day anyway, even if we have ignored the offer? If you have any other answer other than desperation on SUTD's side to get more students, please say it in the comment. I do really want to know.

On the other hand, NUS ASEAN scholarship interview is, as the name suggests, a scholarship interview. Purely, solely, a scholarship interview. Obviously, they have nothing to lose. There are rows of students being interviewed for this scholarship. Some are better than others. Some speak more fluently than others. Some can bluff wonderfully, while some stutter a lot here and there, struggling to express themselves, for English is not their first language (I am one of them). There is no reason for them to pity such struggling students, when they have others who seem much more promising. 

So that you can judge whether I am exaggerating my pessimism (and thus I am positively suffering from inferiority complex), or I am actually being realistic, below is how the day of my interview went. I name the locations just so that those who are familiar with the places can have a fuller picture of what was happening. Even if you do not know the places, it's okay. It would not affect your understanding of the story anyway.

I left my lodging (my uncle's house) at Eunos at 1315h (my interview was at 1500 at NUS (duh)). The first time I left, I forgot to bring my wallet, which is necessary for travelling since my ezlink card (a card with money inside which you use to take public transport in Singapore) is inside. Luckily I realized that when I just exited the elevator on the ground floor, so I return into the elevator and return to my uncle's to take my wallet. I took the elevator, cross the road, and halfway towards the MRT station, I realized that I left my boots, which I actually remembered to bring the first time I left. Fortunately I was not too far away from my uncle's yet, so I rushed back and took my boots. Double checking before I leave the house for the third time, I finally left the place at 1330. Had not had any lunch. I could not have had any anyway, due to the butterflies in my stomach. A bad start.

I reached the exact location of the interview at 1440. I changed to my interview attire at the nearby restroom, and went into the office (not the interview room, yet). Inside, I saw many of my Indonesian friends who were also invited for the interview. I cannot tell if it is a good or bad thing. I was thinking of rehearsing my answers while waiting, or maybe talk a little to others who are waiting in line. However, Indonesians being Indonesians, it is impossible to keep quiet when there are a large number of them. So I ended up catching up with them, gaining some insider information about the university life, and other information not related to the interview. As it turned out, the person before me took quite sometime and I was only summoned inside the interview room at 1515.

It was quite a small room. There is only one person waiting inside. A one-on-one interview. Does not sound bad, does it? So I entered the room, did the standard thing like greeting and waited to be asked to have a seat and the like. The first few minutes were rather pointless talk, like "So, your name is xxxx, is it?", "Where do you come from? Oh, same as the last person!", "What secondary school are you from? Oh, the same as the last person as well!".

Then the "shit got real" part of the interview started ever so smoothly from the small talks. When he his questions were going to the direction of CCA (co-curricular activities, for the benefit of those who do not know), I knew he was getting into the serious part. So, the first question is naturally, what CCAs have you joined? I gave him a short laundry list of what CCAs I joined in secondary and JC school. Then he asked the standard question, "What is your biggest intake from these CCAs?" Oh well. So standard. Should be easy, right? It is the first "real" interview question, after all? Well, so unfortunate for me, I did not prepare for this question. I ended up pausing a while, to the point he doubted himself (or maybe pressurizing me) by asking, "They still call it CCA nowadays right?" I guess he expected those who come for interview to prepare for it, and the fact that I stayed silent for about 3 seconds bothered him rather significantly. So, I answered, stumbled here and there, "Well, uh, I learned that sometimes, things are not always what you think it is. I mean, when I joined the infocomm club, I was expecting to get some programming lessons. There was not any, as it turns out, and thus another intake is to just make the most of it, instead of regretting over the wrong decision made."

Okay, you guys can say it out loud, what a mugger (a Singaporean slang for a student who only cares about academics) I was. I cannot deny it, though it is not entirely true either. I am not going to argue here since the post is going to be really long even without me arguing. So, let's proceed to the next one.

Perhaps unsatisfied with my early-game performance (sorry for the gamer-language used) he asked me if i have served any executive committee position. Another easy, standard question which I have not prepared. Here is my answer, "Well, unfortunately, no. I did try applying for a position in infocomm club when I was in JC. You may have noticed, but I have a rather poor communication skill (!!!!!!!wtf!!!!!!!!) and thus, perhaps, because of that, I failed to convince them that I am suitable for the position. 

I do not know if he had lost all hope on me and just proceed with the next questions just for formality, but anyway, I am sure you can see clearly where I went wrong here. I downplayed myself by saying that I have a poor communication skill. 

Next question was about which one would you choose between NTU and NUS, given NTU has the better offer. Such a no-brainer question would of course be answered with the word "NUS" on the first sentence, followed by a unique reason. That "unique" adjective is what I totally forget to prepare for, thus I ended up answering with a really standard answer, which went something like: "Well, it is of course a really difficult decision for me. If I choose one, I would need to forgo the other, which is not necessarily a worse offer. However, I think I am more leaned towards (I should have said "I am more inclined to choose," now I think about it) NUS, due to the Computing school ranked highly in the world university rankings and the more vibrant students' life."

He cut me when I said the more vibrant students' life, laughing it off, asking if it is true and how do I know that. I said, "Well, at least that is what I saw from outside and what I heard from inside, from my seniors. (laugh)" I do not know if it is really just a small talk question or it actually means something else. However, because I was really nervous, I decided to take it as a small talk question.

He also asked me why I chose Comp Science and not IS, and whether I actually know what are the differences between CS and IS. I have asked this question plenty of times to various sources and I got a more or less similar answer, so here are my answers, more or less: "From what I understand, CS is more about hard-coding, programming, while IS is more about applying it for business solutions. As you may have noticed, my communication skill is not really that good (!!!!!!!!another!wtf!!!!!!!), so I prefer to work as the programmer, and not IS. Furthermore, CS, in my opinion, is a more general degree. A CS graduate can take a wider variety of jobs. A CS graduate can take an IS job, while IS graduate is not necessarily able to take up a CS graduate job. That is why I chose CS over IS, due to the more versatility of the degree."

Well, as you can see, my answer again contains a whole lot of stupid mistakes that should not ever be committed by anyone, ever. Firstly, down-playing myself by saying that I am not a good communicator. Again. Secondly, weird expressions, a trademark of any foreigners whose first language is not English, though probably can be understood by Singaporeans as they surely have encountered many variation of English in their lives. I am sure you can spot many weird expressions in the previous and subsequent paragraphs. Actually there are more, but I decided to paraphrase some to make me look less bad (weird expression alert!) and hopefully, more understandable by a wider audience of my blog. (second highest traffic of this blog comes from Russia. I wonder why Putin is so interested in my blog post)

Then, moving on, he asked me about what I plan to do 10 years from now. My senior has warned me about this question, and I have somewhat prepared it. There is a long story behind my answer, but I am likely to elaborate it in the near future, so let us proceed straight to what my answer was: "Actually, I have an aspiration to make my home country a better place. As you may know, Indonesian government is infamous for its corruption, and I would like to change that (I intend to say "to be a part of a team that change that") through the means of IT."

Then with small prompting questions here and there, I ended up mentioning a Singapore-based company that I doubt many people know, but those who read my previous blogs would know. That is right, I mentioned Ecquaria!!! I cannot really remember what the exact question was, perhaps something along the line, "Woah, that is a really big dream you have there. It is not easy you know! + some question to find out if I know what I am talking about" so I answered, "Actually, I have heard of this Singapore-based company called Ecquaria which provides e-government solutions. I do not know if it is also used in Singapore, but I would like to learn from them and apply it to Indonesia. I know there are a lot of things to do, such as networking with people in the government so that I would be able to know the small, more details about the problem faced by Indonesian government."

More mistakes that should never be committed if you are applying for a scholarship not provided by your home country: Do not ever say that you want to go back to your home country ever so quickly, taking the lesson you learn from them to help other countries grow. I mean, it is their right to get us to work for them upon graduation because, well, education is not a cheap investment. Let's say that we scholarship applicants are investments for the country providing the scholarship. If you know that the investment will not benefit you much but instead drains your knowledge for the benefit of other country, why would you want to pay for his/her education so that he/she can go back to where he/she came from and save the day? Actually, my plan was to say that "I liked it here. I like living in Singapore. If possible, I want to have a job in Singapore which also enable me to contribute back to my home country. One way is by making the government less corrupt and more efficient through IT. I heard of this company called....." But perhaps because I was too nervous, I did not say it.

Actually, he looked a bit impressed by my knowledge of this company called Ecquaria, by saying, "Woah, so you are really serious in pursuing this, uh?" Well, I wrote a bit, due to my not-so-convincing tone when elaborating the above paragraph. At least I have one selling point out of the many reasons for them to reject my scholarship application.

Finally, as a closing, he asked me which would I choose if I am offered a scholarship in NTU but not in NUS, will I still choose NUS. I never liked this kind of questions. I mean, if you answer truthfully (choosing the one with scholarship, of course!!), which I did, it shows your doubt on applying to NUS, and thus making you less priced by them. But, if you just bullshit your way and say that you will still choose NUS because money is not important bla bla bla, you would sound really insincere and they would not like it as well. Some of my friends managed to give a more politically correct answer by leaving it hanging, though I do not know if it is any better than the other two, but regardless, here is my very own answer: "Well, of course it would still be a really difficult choice for me, but I think I would in the end choose NTU, but fully (should be solely/purely) due to financial reasons, not because NTU is better than NUS."

So, what do you think? The interview was generally quite easy right? If only I have a better command of English, especially spoken English.... Anyway, perhaps you can be so kind as to give me some guidance to better answer such standard questions, for the sake of my next interview which would be on the 17th, in the comments section below? Or you can also flame me for being so dumb. I think I deserved that. Constructive feedback is still preferred though.