How to increase your chance in entering a local university

Landing a spot in Singapore’s local university is tough! In 2015, about 15.4 thousand students enrolled into the first 3 local universities! Compared to 239 thousand students who enrolled into primary schools that year, this implies an approximate enrolment of a mere 6.5%. Undeniable, entries are often based on pure merit, and we seek to define underlying traits of students who have managed to land themselves a spot in our local universities. By being able to integrate and emulate these characteristics, your chances of landing in university will increase!

While some of these traits might seem cliché, it aims to build on the soft skill sets that undergrads are supposed to have and are transferable in almost all aspects of life. Paramount Education also goes one step further to explain why these traits are important!

Trait 1: Being thorough

Local university students are extremely thorough in whatever they do, be it planning for an event, doing assignments or studying! This habit once cultivated can be an extremely powerful force not just in school, but in life as well! Many a times, students always view concepts on the surface and do not stop to think about the underlying meaning behind concepts and how it applies to life. Students should question, understand and analyse why things are being done in a certain way, the outcome, the benefits and costs of applying the said solution.

Trait 2: Plan your schedule

Set a goal and plan your schedule in advance and make sure that you complete your daily tasks. This enables you to take small baby steps into achieving your target. Get a monthly scheduler and write down your to-dos and make those tasks specific.

Writing things down holds you accountable for your daily actions and keeps you on track for the end goal. If things get too monotonous and you feel stifled, you can always set mini-rewards for yourself every few days!

Trait 3: Lead a healthy lifestyle

This is perhaps the most important trait to have for everyone! It is scientifically proven that leading a healthy lifestyle prevents fatigue and allows one to have more energy compared to a person leading an unhealthy lifestyle. This is important for students because the exams are not just a race but rather, a marathon that requires consistency, endurance and determination.

Leading a healthy lifestyle also implies that one gets sufficient sleep. As sleeping consists of 3 cycles mainly, Light Sleep, Deep Sleep, REM sleep, with the entire cycle lasting 1.5 hours. It is important that one understands how sleep works to realize that sometimes, sleeping just slightly longer might cause you to feel lethargic and in an irritable mood the entire day. This is where most people write it off as getting up on the wrong side of the bed.

Well-informed students lead a healthy lifestyle and get appropriate sleep. This helps them learn faster, remember longer and feel less tired!

Conclusion

Now that you know the secrets to the nation’s smartest minds, you can start to apply them to your life too! While we acknowledge that there might be some other inherent characteristics that we failed to mention, all road leads inevitably to Rome through forked paths. We invite you to drop us a message to let us know what other characteristics that one can take so that chances of entering into Singapore’s local university are higher!