Letters by Tan Hao Chong
I am a 2008 SPM student ranked top 7th in a premier school at Johor Bahru (S.M.K. Sultan Ismail) .I scored 11A1 and 1A2 in Chinese in SPM. I applied for JPA and was rejected after appeal. I was not even offered for local institutions. I am active in co-curricular activities and I believe I have done well in my interview.
The rejects had brought many sleepless nights for me and my parents. What is most sad is that students of poorer results were randomly selected in an attempt to confuse the public. My mum took the matter to the Sin Chew Press and Nanyang Press. Thanks to the papers the matter was brought to the attention of many.
I am writing to you as going to Mr. Lim is our only and last hope for justice now.
Here are some of the facts:
Out of the 800 appeals made through MCA, 250 were of straight A1s as tabulated below and as far as I know , only 69 cases were successful
No of A1 No. of students
15 1 14 1 13 9 12 64 11 110 9&10 65
Immediately after SPM, I attended a seminar organized by MCA Youth in Johor Bahru and was excited to hear the announcement by Dato’ Wee that 20% ie 400 out of 2000 scholarship will be awarded to students with good results regardless of race, economic background, CCA and interviews. Obviously , this was not done. We are disappointed with MCA for failing to give us justice.
The head of JPA promised to publish the results of successful applicants and until now nothing was announced.
By changing the name of scholarship and promises of more transparency in future is only going to help the future applicants, which is very unfair to current applicants. We would have missed our lifetime opportunity.
We understand that you are going to bring this matter to the parliament. This is a good news for many of us .We hope your action will bring justice to us and our confidence in the education system and future of Malaysia.