Interview with the Straits Times: On being the first batch of SMU’s prestigious University Scholarship Programme 

Arti­cle Pub­lish On: 23 Octo­ber 2010

After a rig­or­ous inter­view process, Co-founder Algene Tan beat out hun­dreds of hope­ful appli­cants to be one of only 13 stu­dents offered the pres­ti­gious SMU’s Uni­ver­si­ty Schol­ar­ship Pro­gramme (USP) schol­ar­ship.

2010 was the first year SMU offered its USP schol­ar­ship. Under this schol­ar­ship, schol­ars would com­plete a ful­ly-spon­sored co-ter­mi­nal bach­e­lors and master’s pro­gramme. Dur­ing the course of the pro­gramme, schol­ars would have to take lib­er­al arts mod­ules regard­less of their course of study. They would also have to com­plete an exchange pro­gramme as well as an over­seas com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice mis­sion. The schol­ar­ship pro­gramme was aimed at groom­ing future thought lead­ers by equip­ping stu­dents with a cut­ting edge edu­ca­tion that is rel­e­vant to a chang­ing and com­pet­i­tive world.

It took Algene 4.5 years to com­plete a bach­e­lors and mas­ters of laws. Although he read law, he under­took mod­ules in inter­dis­ci­pli­nary stud­ies, psy­chol­o­gy, nat­ur­al sci­ences, eco­nom­ics, busi­ness and sta­tis­tics. Look­ing back, Algene admits that it was a chal­leng­ing expe­ri­ence but one he felt was extreme­ly worth the hard work. The USP pro­gramme has def­i­nite­ly shaped his think­ing and made him a more con­fi­dent and well-round­ed per­son.