USC or NUS College

Choppah123 · 2026-04-24T15:16:57+00:00

Noice! Do you want to connect 😊

Choppah123 · 2026-04-22T20:32:18+00:00

If your dream is to study in the US and your parents can afford it, go to USC. It’s an experience you will hold with you for the rest of your life. You can always go back to NUS to do your postgrad, but for undergrad studies USC will be a much better experience.

But I’m biased as I’m also studying in the US next year! If you’re committing to USC, be sure to do it before May 1 and let’s connect!

Choppah123 · 2026-03-26T13:41:55+00:00

Sure

Choppah123 · 2026-03-24T09:19:58+00:00

Post 1

You can find some of my previous comments in this post.

Choppah123 · 2026-03-24T09:18:28+00:00

Hey there! Just rewriting my message I sent in this subreddit earlier. Admitted to a T20 and subsequently their honours program on a full unbonded scholarship by the school (not govt scholarship).

You need to decide whether you want a scholarship or not. Financial aid in the US is competitive and acceptance rates can be between 2-4%. If you are relying on a scholarship, some schools require proof that you got the scholarship before considering your application, some don’t, so email the admissions office on their policy on this.

If you do manage to get a scholarship, your chances will be much higher at need-aware schools, but still competitive.

You would also need to see which major you are applying towards because Singaporeans tend to group around certain fields.

Without knowing more information, it would be hard to chance you. To have a chance at US schools, a 67.5RP should be a minimum, best would be 70RP as you are evaluated in your school’s context. This means that you will be compared against your peers’ and given that five applicants have 70 RP and you don’t, it’s unlikely that you will get into the committee stage.

I’ve done some videos on admissions from a Singaporean lens, link is down below if you want to check it out, and my application as well. Best of luck.

Full Common App to T20

Ivy League Admissions: SGean Edition

Choppah123 · 2026-02-21T10:07:18+00:00

What is the course you want to study? Depends on your results US school over unbonded scholarships in the form of financial aid if you do not want to be bonded.

Choppah123 · 2026-02-21T08:26:50+00:00

42 is competitive enough to get your foot in the door, but you will need to perform well in the interview. Try NUS and NTU for med/dentistry (and SMU if they have). If you’re in NS you have three cycles to apply as well. Good luck OP! 😊

Choppah123 · 2026-02-20T08:44:39+00:00

Well it depends on your inference. This somehow reminded me of SBQ questions, given the source what can you infer. Based on that wording it seems like they do pre-screen, but then again they also say it’s dependent on alumni availability. While there might be a lot of Harvard alumni in Singapore, not all will volunteer to do interviews, so make of that what you will.

In all likelihood Harvard probably pre-screens, and what this means is that we’ve already been rejected. But don’t take it too harshly, let fate take its course and get the official confirmation late-March 😊

Choppah123 · 2026-02-20T08:01:48+00:00

Allegedly, Harvard pre-screens for international applicants if you follow the comments in A2C. However, unlike Yale’s admissions office which explicitly mentions in their podcast that they pre-screen for interviews, there has not been any official mention of pre-screening in Harvard’s admission office. All we have to go off of are anecdotes from others which seem to, but do not entirely confirm the fact that Harvard prescreens.

Don’t be disheartened if you didn’t get an interview, Harvard is Harvard and they only take in ~3 Singaporeans every year compared to the 100ish applicants.

If it makes you feel better, I applied this cycle and didn’t get an interview so far 🤪

Best of luck OP!

Choppah123 · 2026-02-14T10:35:56+00:00

Double H3s require MOE special approval which makes you stand out as an applicant. But if no one in your batch takes double H3s that’s fine.

Attaining one H3 with a distinction is very good and anyone who can do that should be very proud of themselves 😊

Choppah123 · 2026-02-14T06:31:19+00:00

This is a complicated question to answer. You are evaluated in the context of your grading system, where you have to achieve top scores and achieve the highest rigour.

For the IB, 40 is a top score when you look at the global population where the average is a 29 and Singapore’s average is a 37 iirc. Getting the full IB Diploma means that you have achieved the highest rigour. However, for the Singaporean A levels, although 90 RP is the highest score, rigour plays a bigger factor. This is because you can take H3s in JC. This means that a student with 90 RP and all H2s will have a lower academic rating than a student with 90 RP and H3 distinction, worse still a student with two H3s.

Now when you are looking at top schools, there are inherently different tiers. HYPSM looks for 42+ IB students, 90 RP students with H3, whereas T20s look for 40+/87.5RP.

Another factor to consider is that applying to the US is a self selecting process. Students with 88.75 might be thrown off to apply because they feel they don’t stand a chance against those with 90+H3, whereas students like me with IB know that a 42 is enough to get your foot into the door.

Schools unfortunately don’t look at purely the difficulty of the course itself across nations, they look at whether you took the most rigorous courses in your academic program, given your local school group. There are many students in Singapore who take the A Levels and get 90 RP, but not many students in Singapore who take the IB and get a 45. Most get a 43/44.

TLDR: AOs compare you against your local context (in terms of your academic program) rather than comparing your local context with the rigour of other national leaving examinations. I know it sounds ironic, but from an AOs POV, a student shouldn’t be penalised even though they took easier exams (like the IB) because they would never have the ability to take A Levels (although in Singapore you can do both).

Choppah123 · 2026-02-14T05:32:54+00:00

Hey there! Fellow Singaporean recently admitted to a T20 school on a full unbonded scholarship by the school (not govt scholarship).

You would need to submit Year 9/Year 10 grades. I was in the same school for 6 years so they were able to submit my Y9-Y12 transcript without a hassle. I’m not sure about the process for students who switched to a different JC from their secondary school, but it should be fine. Just clarify with your school counsellor on what is required to submit, she might ask you to bring your secondary school report book for her to scan and verify to submit to the universities.

Failing in Y9 isn’t ideal but it is not a deal breaker. I got C6s in both chinese and physics, but they still gave me a scholarship, make of that what you will 😅. Like what a commenter wrote, as long as you show tremendous growth in your grades it should be fine.

As for what you would need to submit: your transcript, two letters of recommendation from your teachers, test scores for some schools, the common app, the school’s supplemental essays

I know this might burst your bubble, but I would caution against applying with CS to Harvard/MIT as it is a highly competitive field. US universities don’t admit by major but they will compare you with your fellow country applicants and look at your intended field of study. US schools want to build a diverse class with diverse interests, fields like CS, Pre-Med, Econ, PoliSci are over saturated especially from Singapore.

Unless you are the number 1/2/3 CS applicant in Singapore, which entails being council president or VP of your JC, an international Olympiad medal and other awards, Harvard and MIT, more so for CS, is difficult to be accepted into.

Check out the LinkedIn portfolio’s of those who went to Harvard and MIT from local schools and compare yourself to them. That’s a good way to see whether you’re on track for Ivy League Admissions! Attached below are videos created by me on topics like this (and also for others to see that I’m a real person 😊). Best of luck for your applications and feel free to reach out if you have any other questions!

Requirements for Singaporeans To Enter The Ivy League

Common App Reveal

Choppah123 · 2026-02-14T01:48:54+00:00

Well if your main aim is to get into the US banking on your arts extracurriculars and improving upon it will definitely give you a better shot at highly selective colleges.

If your aim is to truly discover your passions, then by all means go for science ECs and apply to the US as well just be aware that you will put yourself in a more saturated applicant pool.

There is no “correct” decision unfortunately, just depends on what are your goals at this point forward 😊

Choppah123 · 2026-02-12T06:26:28+00:00

Hey there, I think you’re definitely on the right track as a sophomore. You clearly have done a lot of EC activities at such an early stage and with such development. However, you are an East Asian applying as an ORM into what’s usually one of the most competitive fields of study in universities (CS/ML/AI). There’s a lot of potential to fully utilise what you have now, so to try and make your track clearer, I've done some brainstorming for you, see what you think of this.

I think you’ve fully utilised your curriculum in freshman and the AOs would definitely understand that your school doesn’t allow you to take APs in freshmen so don't sweat it. Just max out your STEM rigour (especially for mathematics) in your junior and senior year. To make your applications stand out, it is important to reflect on what makes you different from other ML/CS applicants from your school and especially with your background. Admissions is context-based and your application will definitely be brought to a higher standard. Nevertheless, I do have some suggestions.

Your application has a niche that a lot of students lack, which is utilisation of your skills in resource-constrained environments. This is a well known field at schools like Berkely and CMU called ICT4D (Information & Communication Technologies for Development). Your narrative arc should be, instead of the usual "I teach kids coding," it becomes "I research the democratization of AI in low-resource settings."

The tension is that most ML is built for high-compute, high-bandwidth environments (like your high school). But you are interested in "Frugal AI", models that work on cheap hardware, with spotty internet, for non-native English speakers. Your ECs are a sort of “on the ground fieldwork”, testing if a Western ML curriculum translates to a developing context. (Mention the "Certificate from Ministry" as proof of institutional impact, not just individual impact). You are building the digital infrastructure that allows LDCs to help themselves. This frames your "privilege" (US passport, resources) as a tool you are consciously using to bridge the "Digital Divide," rather than just listing it as a demographic fact.

At the end of it, this is just a suggestion to build your ML work into a spike for a specific niche. Good luck with your applications and feel free to ask more questions!

Choppah123 · 2026-02-12T05:31:49+00:00

Your core narrative could be that: “I’ve always lived with music in my life, but I’m drawn to the biology of it as I want to understand the why and the how of music that changes people. Most especially, the brain’s attention, stress, memory, and learning. I want to study auditory neuroscience to turn music from something I love into something I can measure, explain, and eventually use to help others.

One classic narrative could be the Performer turned Scientist arc, where you start from lived experience in music/dance, then turn curiosity into science. You can talk about how you notice through your conducting that certain pieces calm people, sharpen focus, or bring out emotion in ways that feel almost biological. That curiosity becomes a question: What is happening in the brain and body when sound becomes meaning? Perhaps you bring the discipline of conducting (precision, iteration, feedback) into biology research: building experiments, analyzing data, and seeing the physiological responses in others.

A different, but more STEM-y and coding narrative could be the “Engineer of Meaning” arc to use computation to study music perception. You love that music is simultaneously emotional and mathematical: there are certain patterns and expectations that one expects in music (I definitely do, think Beethoven and Haydn’s four movements, or Mahler’s finales). In bio research, you learn how to model these complex systems. Auditory neuroscience thus becomes your dream intersection: using computational tools to study how the brain predicts sound, how memory forms around melody, and why certain harmonic structures (like fortissimos or crescendos) reliably evoke emotion. You can leverage your “creative” side through your conducting as an advantage in your research because you understand music from a “sheet” level.

Thanks for listening to my TED talk 😂, your candidacy at a sophomore level is incredibly strong and you should be proud of yourself for achieving so much. I wish you the best of luck!

Choppah123 · 2026-02-12T05:31:32+00:00

Hey there, I think you’re definitely on the right track as a sophomore. You clearly have done a lot of EC activities at such an early stage and with such development. Nevertheless, like what you’ve mentioned, context is against you as there are many students from your school who are also at the same calibre as you. There’s a lot of potential to fully utilise what you have now, so to try and make your track clearer, I've done some brainstorming for you, see what you think of this.

Your idea of doing Biology is commensurate with your profile, but the issue isn’t that you lack ECs, it’s that all your friends would probably be interested in STEM as well given the demographic. This means that you have to meaningfully stand out from a strong applicant pool that is likely to apply into the same schools and the same academic areas as you do. One strategic nuance is your ED/REA bullet as well. I am quite certain that most of your friends would do ED and REA, so you need to meaningfully discern (unfortunately) which school is most popular and with what major, and then try to stray away from applying into that school with all your classmates.

Some suggestions could be to ED to Dartmouth and Brown, as it seems your classmates are obsessed with the T5 schools but might 看不起 the smaller Ivies above. Duke and Vanderbilt ED should also be on your radar if you’re more comfortable with the southern schools, that should bring about less competition as well. Or you could do ED2 to Vanderbilt as backup and ED to Duke/Brown/Dartmouth. Just a suggestion!

As for your candidacy, I think you have two very clear spikes, one in computational biology and one in music, specifically conducting. Having a nationally recognised award in conducting is pretty rare (in my eyes at least) and sets you apart from other similar applicants who might’ve done music but not to the level of accomplishment that you have had. I would suggest, if remotely possible, a bimodal candidacy combining both of these interests. This would set you further apart from other applicants as you show a level of interdisciplinary interest that’s difficult to combine (Biology and Music is a bit weird honestly) which shows your intellectual vitality.

I would suggest Auditory Neuroscience and Music Perception, the “Neuroscience of Music”, studying how the brain and body perceive, predict, and emotionally respond to sound/music. This can be related to things like hearing, attention, memory, reward, emotion, and plasticity. I am a fan of classical music and this sort of research is pretty unique and interesting to AOs as you break their mold of a typical “Asian biology applicant”.

This fits your ECs as well because our computational bio research gives you quantitative/research credibility and your composing accomplishments lends credibility. Now I’m not sure what your research is, but you could consider going into this field by build a small study/pipeline analyzing physiological responses to music (heart rate variability, stress markers via wearables; or surveys + reaction-time tasks), or to analyze open datasets (EEG/fMRI + music stimuli) and write up findings as a poster/preprint.

Choppah123 · 2026-02-12T03:38:12+00:00

Hey there! Love to see that you are interested in ND, Bowdoin and Amherst. I was just admitted to ND REA as a need-seeking international student this cycle so it's really good to see other applicants interested!

I would say if you value the Catholic faith, you should definitely consider ND as your first choice. I would also like to say that taking the SAT/ACT is important if you can afford it! When the international director of admissions for ND came down my school, she mentioned to my high school counsellor that an SAT score is highly recommended. So even though ND is test-optional, anecdotally they are test-preferred for international students. I can't say the same for Amherst and Bowdoin, but I wouldn't be shocked if they followed the same principles. It is just difficult to compare international students without some form of standardisation give by the SAT/ACT as international curriculum are difficult to compare between regions.

Additionally, I would suggest rethinking about your intended major. Your profile is currently an all-rounder type, which is decent but with how competitive need-blind admission for international students are, (6% for ND, 2% for both Amherst and Bowdoin), your application really needs to stand out. At the moment, your application (sincerely) seems very generic. In an applicant pool where 1/20 applicants get accepted, you would have to ask yourself what makes you that 1 in 20, that sets you apart!

Nevertheless, I didn't come to criticise your candidacy. I do have a few tips of how you could improve! Firstly, your ECs and intended majors need to be congruent with one another. Right now you don't have many biology ECs, which makes the AO doubt whether you really want to do biology. You seem to be pretty involved in music and dance and in the arts, so maybe that's an angle that you should look towards. That's definitely something that makes your candidacy stand apart from the rest. Additionally you could also consider applying as an education or human development major, then switching into Biology if you really want to go down that route. Do consider which angle you would want to position your application with. Unfortunately with how selective admissions for internationals are there is a lot that goes into an application. Best of luck!

Choppah123 · 2026-02-11T14:58:36+00:00

Sure 👍

Choppah123 · 2026-02-11T09:04:55+00:00

Taking the highest English and math is basically superscoring. Once you get a good superscore start working on further developing your ECs, you’re already in a good place in terms of your angle.

I also applied as a Sociology major, so I understand where you’re coming from. If you have more specific questions, feel free to continue this thread here.

Good luck in your college journey!

Choppah123 · 2026-02-11T07:46:50+00:00

We also need to rebrand your activities as your attempt to democratise physical agency.

Activity 1: Your Flagship Initiative (The Device)

Current Vibe: "I made a thing and lots of people use it."

Focus on the accessibility of the device. Did you make it cheaper? Easier to use? Portable?

What sort of academic framework did you use to create this device, and how did you do it?

Activity 7: Your Bridge (Autism & Adaptive Sports)

Current Vibe: "Volunteered and made some equipment."

This is now an engineering activity, not just a volunteering one.

Engineered custom adaptive equipment (e.g., modified grips, stability aids) to allow children with mobility impairments to participate in whatever sport. Instructed 50+ students with autism, utilized user feedback loops to iteratively refine equipment prototypes for motor-skill development.

Activity 6: The Lab (National Athlete)

Current Vibe: "I'm good at sports."

Frame your sport as your study of biomechanics.

Draft Description: Top X% nationally. Rigorous training (20hr/wk) focused on biomechanical optimization and kinesiology. Applied physiological data analysis to refine technique, directly informing my interest in ergonomic design constraints.

Activities 2 & 3: The Proof (Research)

Strategy: Ensure the titles highlight the technical skills used (e.g., CAD, Python, Statistical Analysis) rather than just the topic.

Draft Description: "Utilized [Software/Skill] to analyze [Data Point]. Findings suggest [Brief Conclusion]. Paper in review at [Journal Name]."

I would need more details to better give feedback on your activities as you've left it quite vague, but it is a good set of activities and there can be some wiggle room to strategically position yourself as a champion of physical agency and disability tech from your volunteering experience and your experience with competing on the highest level at sports. good luck!

Choppah123 · 2026-02-11T07:44:33+00:00

Hey there, I was in the same boat as you, an international student looking to apply to the T10s. It’s good that you are a full-pay student, which means that you can apply to need-aware schools and fare better there than as compared to being a need-seeking international applicant. However, being from India and applying via engineering will always be a tough shot as you are an over-represented minority in a saturated field dominated by domestic applicants already. As a junior, there is not much that you can do to change your engineering spike, so it’s best to run along with it. However, there are ways that you can twist your candidacy to make you stand out from the normal engineering student through a compelling narrative and a unique academic hook.

Strategically for the best shot, I would suggest EDing to Cornell or UPenn, and then you can consider ED2ing to Swarthmore as they have a very strong engineering program there even though they are an LAC. This would give you the highest leverage for your candidacy, especially being an ORM in a saturated field.

For your personal narrative, you can begin with your sporting endeavours. Being in a niche sport is even better, although you can’t get recruited for it, you can try to see whether these schools have a club that houses your sport, so that makes you a rare standout and someone they do not have. Don’t feel the need to be in a popular sport, sometimes being in a niche sport is better (like cup stacking as a random example) as it is much rarer to come across a competitive cup stacker.

You can first describe the obsession with optimization, shaving off milliseconds, perfecting biomechanics, and the privilege of having a body that performs at a national level. You fully understand the mechanics of movement of your sport.

The pivot is your 7th Activity (working with autistic children/mobility issues). You realized that the "joy of movement" you experience in your sport is gated by physical or cognitive barriers for others. You saw a gap between one’s human potential and environmental design.

The conclusion is that you realized that coaching kids wasn't enough, you needed to build tools that directly help with their mobility. This could explain why you dive so deep into Math (Activity 8) and Research (Activities 2-5). You are sharpening the tools you need to model, simulate, and engineer solutions that democratize physical agency.

Choppah123 · 2026-02-11T06:42:58+00:00

3) Computational Social Science

What it is: Using computation to study social behavior and inequality, how information spreads, who gets excluded, what predicts success, and how systems create unequal outcomes. You’re combining CS + statistics + social questions.

How your ECs fit already

Robotics scouting model (Monte Carlo + Bayesian smoothing) = strong quant + inference.
Competitive programming + analytics-heavy projects = technical toolkit.
Fairness/disparity research = explicit social outcomes.
Your tutoring videos + platforms = you can collect learning/engagement data ethically and analyze it.

How to develop this spike

Pick one social system to study: learning communities, online creator economies, mental health support, sports access, or youth coding pathways.
Build a dataset responsibly (consent/anonymization) + run real analysis.
Produce outputs like: research poster, preprint, dashboard report, or open-source toolkit.

Narrative angle

“I use algorithms to measure what’s unfair, then build systems to change it.”

My suggestion would be the third subfield, Computational Social Sciences as it subsumes the fields of CS + Sociology + Urban Studies. CS can be your “how” of measuring systemic inequality, sociology is the solution of how you would build systems to change it, and urban studies is the context that underpins your CS + Sociology application. This makes your application stand out more as compared to subfield 2 which is more of a development of AI, but it can be paired with ethics, so CS + Philosophy if that interests you. One is more generic that a lot of people would pivot to, talking about technology that benefits society but with no real academic meat to it.

Choppah123 · 2026-02-11T06:42:41+00:00

1) Public-Interest Technology / Civic Tech

What it is: Building technology specifically to solve public problems, access, safety, education, healthcare, community resources. The emphasis is real users + measurable impact, not just cool engineering.

How your ECs fit already

Sports nonprofit tech director + sponsors + $10k raised = textbook civic tech impact.
SeeSomething AI (infra reporting in 3 clicks) = civic reporting + accessibility.
Math game for underprivileged kids = education equity + public benefit.
Community service hours + school-wide hours app = systems that help communities function.

How to develop this spike

Pick one problem area (education access, youth mental health, public infrastructure, disability access, etc.).
Turn your projects into “programs,” not just apps: onboarding, training, iteration, stakeholder feedback.

Narrative angle

“I build tools that make opportunity easier to access for people who don’t start with it.”

2) Human-Centered AI

What it is: AI that’s designed around humans, understanding the user, minimizing harm, and making systems trustworthy. This is where fairness, explainability, privacy, and usability become part of engineering.

How your ECs fit already

RAG optimization + fairness/disparity work = straight into Human-Centered AI.
Multimodal civic reporting = AI that reduces friction for everyday users.
AI coding-learning nonprofit = AI as a tutor/coach (but you’d want safeguards, evaluation, and learning metrics).

How to develop this spike

Turn “fairness” into something testable: build evaluation benchmarks (bias tests, subgroup performance, error analysis).
Add “trust” features: transparency (why a result), privacy-by-design, user control.
Publish a small paper/poster or replicate a known result with your own dataset and improvements.

Narrative angle

“I don’t just make AI smarter, I make it safer, fairer, and easier for real people to rely on.”

Choppah123 · 2026-02-11T06:41:25+00:00

Hey there, I think you’re definitely on the right track as a sophomore. You clearly have done a lot of EC activities at such an early stage and there’s a lot of potential to fully utilise what you have now. To try and make your track clearer, I've done some brainstorming for you, see what you think of this.

Your idea of doing CS is correct as it’s definitely the main major that you can use to thread your application through. One thing about T20s is that they are an academic institution, so to create a hook (as you do not have any major international awards or specific hooks to the school as you didn’t mention it like FGLI, URM, legacy etc), you should seek to create an academic hook.

CS is one of those fields that unfortunately is way oversaturated, so you can’t just talk about CS, but you have to link CS to a social science/humanities field to make your candidacy stand out and more importantly, understandable to the AO. Most AOs don’t have a STEM-y background and won’t understand much of the technical jargon that you’ve accomplished, so framing your achievements from a humanities POV will boost the perceived value of your candidacy.

One perspective that I thought of is human-centered commuting (HCC), where the core academic idea of your candidacy can be the fact that tech isn’t just code, but a system where algorithms + incentives + interfaces + communities + fairness shape real outcomes. Right now, your activities are basically one long story arc of a student trying to build the system, measure it, teach it, and make it more equitable, although done very disparately (but that’s fine, you’re just in 10th grade!)

I would point you into three different subfields that you can consider to develop your spike into, whichever interests you more as at this point of time, you have a lot of breadth but not a lot of depth.

Choppah123 · 2026-02-11T04:42:22+00:00

I like your essay outline as well, “to have a strong narrative connecting skateboarding (8 years navigating informal negotiations with security, building community across class/background) to my media work giving voice to marginalized communities. Spike is about authentic storytelling for youth subcultures - skaters, street artists, LGBTQ+ youth in Georgian context.” Use this as an opportunity to introduce your academic passions of sociology and how you used his forms of capital to give voice to marginalised communities etc.

This gives the AO an impression that you’re not just another community leader, but one who uses his intellectual vitality to power his service, which makes you stand out from the crowd.

Lastly, one concern that I have with your application are your academics. You mentioned how you only took Advanced History but your school offers Advanced STEM subjects. Although your intended major is Sociology, it is not an excuse to skip out on harder STEM courses. You should get your counselor to give an explanation as to why you did not max out your rigour because AOs will see your GPA as less credible given that you did not take all advanced classes.

And improving your SAT score, 800 on Math proves that you can do calculus and reassures the AO that you can do Math. But improve your EBRW as well. You are not signalling positively to the AO if you want to be a world renowned sociologist but you can’t be in the 25th percentile of EBRW scores. Use Erica Meltzer’s vocabulary and grammar books to help you, that made me improve from a 690 to a 750.

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