Blocked from SJU "Merit-Based" Scholarship Because

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It is not discrimination for one thing, Zero because no one explain the requirements to NEWater nor did they asked him as well. So it is complete confusion on both ends. It is clearly not age discrimination.

It is discrimination to offer something only to a select group of people. It may be legal discrimination, but it is still discrimination.

There was no confusion on the school's part. They know about the requirements for the scholarship, but they did not communicate all of them, and they did not consider that some candidates would be barred because their local country puts obligations that would make them ineligible.

It is not discrimination for one thing, Zero because no one explain the requirements to NEWater nor did they asked him as well. So it is complete confusion on both ends. It is clearly not age discrimination.

Hello TheHawk,

My name is Davin Ng, age 22, and I am, or was an International applicant to your school, SJU.

I'm from Singapore, and following my discharge from two years of National Service (which I will cover later) earlier this year, I have only just embarked upon my journey of tertiary education, which was looking quite bright till it was dashed mercilessly by your Admissions Department.

Where shall I start? I am presently attending Broward Community College (based in FL) which has an overseas campus based in the Center for American Education (CAE) here in Singapore. I immediately started classes at CAE for its summer semester following my discharge from National Service on June '09, and earned my first A grade and 3 credits from my very first college course in Introduction to Ethics. On the first week of October, I received the news of those results and attended a U.S. Education Fair which was organized by CAE. It was there where I first heard of SJU not from the representative of SJU who was there, but from the student counsellors from CAE whom I knew well, informing me that SJU was present, sang its praises at length and informed me of this wonderful scholarship that they were offering.

At first glance of SJU, I was hesitant. Its tuition fees alone was $32,000 per annum. My parents would absolutely never be capable of affording that. To take a student loan for that kind of tuition in this economic climate and interest rates was suicide. What convinced me to start considering SJU was a merit-based scholarship for freshmen, which was - according to the information communicated to me at the time - any student seeking to enter with fewer than 12 credits. This merit was supposed to be determined by an essay-writing competition that was to be held at the US Embassy here in Singapore on February. The only condition in order to qualify for trying for this scholarship was to earn approval through SJU's application process.

Sounds simple enough, right? It was not.

I painstakingly took the time to arrange for my application and my supporting documents sent to SJU, which cost me about $100 in application and numerous postage fees. It cut deep into my finances, as my personal income was a touch less than $300/month, but I did not mind as I thought I had a bright academic future to look forward to.

In the end, I was informed that my application was transferred to the College of Professional and Liberal Studies. I thought it odd, and asked the person in charge, Elisabeth Woodward about progress on my scholarship, to which she confessed no knowledge to it. I redirected my query to Rachel Johnson in Undergraduate Admissions and was bluntly told that I was abruptly, ineligible because I was 22, and was too old to be considered an undergraduate freshman.

It stung, and it still stings. How is it that SJU could claim the quality of cura personalis if it rejects someone from an opportunity because of his age? How could SJU call this scholarship "merit-based" if I was rejected before I could even try, and because of my sole mistake of being born early?

I'm confident that my application credentials were not lacking, for my supporting documents are certainly on file in SJU and they can be checked at any time. So, my rejection could not be based on inferior credentials.

My greatest grievance lies in the fact that my circumstances with National Service were not given any consideration. In Singapore, every male citizen has to serve for two years, mostly within the military function. I spent two years of my life, from Jun '07 to Jun '09 from age 20 to 22, and it was impossible for me to attempt deferment for college even if I had known earlier. I have just returned to civilian life eager to start it again, have just barely commenced my tertiary education and I now find that I could not even be given the opportunity to try for a "merit-based" scholarship due to the technicality of my age.

I have always thought of US education with its emphasis on creativity and open-mindedness to be superior to Singapore's obsession with rote learning and exam skills. When I was introduced to SJU on October, I very much bought into SJU's ideals of cura personalis and the magis, and as an autistic person with Asperger's Syndrome who managed to survive the military and seeing SJU's environment as an excellent environment to adjust myself to the world around me, SJU decided to crush my hopes and dreams after building them up, because of my mistake of being born a year early.

I think it's a thorough shame that a school promotes itself a school of values in cura personalis to reject someone for an opportunity because of such a technicality. It's destroyed my impression of US education, and makes me suspicious if the many US schools that I also took a mild interest in, were as sneaky and unscrupulous with technicalities as SJU has been to me.

Perhaps I will absolutely destroy my chances of future admission to SJU with this email, but I think the student body deserves to know how its admissions department has been treating its applicants and their scholarship hopefuls, and hope that such travesties will not happen to future applicants.

Sincerely,

Davin

Well, I asked SJU's representative here to help me plead my case, but she's come back to me saying that SJU is digging their heels in and are flat-out refusing my appeal.

Well, seriously, SJU was already pretty darn demanding about making their applicants go through a lot of trouble to send their supporting documents. On top of their own application forms, they have to ask their high school, SAT Collegeboard, present college, and college professor who's writing the recommendation letter to all send it independently. For all the trouble they were imposing on me, the least they could've done was to give my case some thought.

*shrugs* But since they've already made it so clear that they didn't want me, what's the point? I decided to present my case to SJU's student body newspaper, as follows:



I'm honestly, not harboring any hopes that.. if the newspaper indeeds publishes and investigates my case, they will grant me a fresh chance. It's more likely they'll blacklist me for life. But I don't care at this point. They decided to abuse their "The Management reserves the right..." clause, then don't mind me if I take the gloves off.

I don't know if you've met the professors who're teaching me now, zeronetgain, but even if BCC's admission requirements are next to nothing, it doesn't mean that its syllabus nor teachers are next to nothing. The professors like Ethan Moore, Tad Wellman, Steven Burik and Lance Dubos who taught me for the past semester were I think, some of the smartest people I've run into for a long time, as opposed to the intellectual deadweights that the local universities' professors are.

I don't know if you've met the professors who're teaching me now, zeronetgain, but even if BCC's admission requirements are next to nothing, it doesn't mean that its syllabus nor teachers are next to nothing. The professors like Ethan Moore, Tad Wellman, Steven Burik and Lance Dubos who taught me for the past semester were I think, some of the smartest people I've run into for a long time, as opposed to the intellectual deadweights that the local universities' professors are.