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IT's his passion
A bond-free scholarship gives Mr Lee the freedom to pursue new opportunities in the future.
PHOTO: CHONG JUN LIANG
NATIONAL University of Singapore (NUS) freshman Daniel Lee urges school leavers to pursue a field of study that they are passionate about.
The 22-year-old believes that “there is a strong correlation between passion and success in life”. He should know. After all, his passion for Information Technology (IT) has paid off for Mr Lee, an NUS Undergraduate (Merit) Scholarship recipient who is pursuing a Bachelor of Computing degree.
After completing his O levels at Temasek Secondary School, Mr Lee was already “quite certain” about his passion for IT. So, even though his results were good enough to get him into a top junior college, he enrolled in Temasek Polytechnic for an IT course.
Mr Lee not only earned a Diploma in IT (Enterprise Computing), but also topped his cohort and was awarded the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore Gold Medal.
He also won various awards when he represented the polytechnic at IT-related competitions including the Sun Microsystems Java Jive Competition. His achievements were so impressive that he was accepted by all the local and Australian universities he applied to.
Mr Lee finally decided to study at NUS on its bond-free scholarship.For him, when choosing a scholarship, “one of the most important criteria was that it had to be bond-free”.
He explains: “My interests could change during the course of my studies and being bonded could prevent me from pursuing new opportunities or interests.”
He found that very few overseas scholarships were bond-free. A local education has made it “financially more manageable” for him and his family, as “the bond-free ones usually cover only tuition fees and provide for a small allowance on the side, requiring the student to bear a significant part of the overall living costs”.
He says: “Studying in Singapore has proved to be much more convenient as opposed to going overseas. I receive a globally recognised, academically rigorous education here at NUS, while enjoying the comforts of home.”
The NUS’ Computer Science course, hesays, “places far more emphasis on fundamentals than one might expect. As someone who is always curious about how things work, I find this aspect of the course particularly enjoyable and useful. However, the level of detail also significantly raises the difficulty of the course”.
He has managed to achieve very good grades so far. He says: “The course also requires students to read modules outside of Computer Science. Such modules include Science modules and a module on business and technical communication.”
He finds the course is comprehensive inboth depth and breadth. “Many of today’s problems are inter disciplinary and by equipping students with a strong foundation in their field of specialisation and adequate basic knowledge of other domains of study, this programme prepares them well to tackle these problems,” he adds.
“IT is an exciting field to be in, with new developments unfolding all the time. Also,the career prospects are very good, considering that technology is ubiquitous,” he says.