PSC Scholarship Guide [UniStarterPack]

PSC Scholarship

Benefits and Costs

• University tuition fees covered (especially important for overseas unis which can be expensive)

• Guaranteed employment in the civil service due to the bond (Good if you genuinely want to work in government, but also a downside because you’re locked in for 4-6 years).

• Leadership progression. Even after university, you’ll be placed in leadership programmes and groomed for leadership roles in the civil service.

What does PSC look out for / Am I a good fit / Do I stand a chance?

Academic Achievements / Grades

I would be lying if I told you that your JC / Poly grades do not matter in the application process. However, (I can only speak for A-Levels/IB) you do not need a perfect score of 90 RP or 45. 1-2 Bs won’t immediately disqualify you; I had a friend who made it to the final round with 2Bs. Once you get past a certain grade, they use other areas of achievement to differentiate between the remaining candidates.

For A-Level students, they also do not care about your prelim grades (phew!) You also do not need to take H3 subjects; I did not take one, nor did a fellow PSC scholar I know, and both of us still made it. However, taking it and scoring well is still a plus especially if it is relevant to your intended university major, because it demonstrates interest and academic excellence.

Leadership experience

PSC is quite open and flexible with the kinds of extracurricular achievements you present, but one thing that all candidates should demonstrate is significant (and preferably recent) experience AND aptitude in leadership. This can take many different forms: CCA President/Vice-President, leading student council/faculty roles, founding VIA/student-led projects, (and for candidates in NS, being an officer etc.) Prioritise and emphasise your highest and most meaningful roles; lower commitment roles like secretary, class comm or being a sergeant in NS (a dime in a dozen, tbh) might not demonstrate your leadership as much.

Personality / Fit

As with all other public service scholarships, it is very important that you’re a fit for the organisation, in terms of your aspirations, capabilities and values.

To be clear, PSC does not look for a single type of candidate. Extroverts or introverts, hyper-intelligent olympiad-winning geniuses or successful and committed community service leaders, sports or clubs CCAs, supporters of the ruling party or anti-establishment folks (more on that later), the unique backgrounds of each candidate is considered as potential evidence of merit in their own right. It’s more important that you excel deeply in whatever it is you’re doing.

PSC is that open-minded because they are looking for a diverse slate of scholars to disrupt group-thinking in policy making circles. This is assuring because you do not need to conform to a specific mould; you don’t need to be a stereotypical Student Council President, for instance (there’s been many who have been rejected). When PSC says they want to see the real you, they mean it. You shouldn’t (and don’t need to) fake an interest or proficiency in something you think will impress them.

However, there are underlying values and principles that all candidates are expected to demonstrate, namely honesty and the genuine desire to serve the public.

Application Process

There are 3 “stages” or rounds of shortlisting in the scholarship selection process, with their own mini-stages that I’ve unofficially named A, B, and so on. Candidates go through each stage, and if they do well enough, they move to the next. As of 2009, roughly 2,500 candidates applied for the scholarship (Stage 1). A certain number of shortlisted folks (unknown) move on to the Psychometric Test (Stage 2). Of these, 350 candidates move into the final Stage 3, roughly 60-90 of whom will be awarded the scholarship.

This yields an overall average acceptance rate of roughly 3%. However, note that a. the numbers vary significantly every year, and there is no quota for how many scholars they should accept. They evaluate whether each candidate has met their criteria, and proceed accordingly b. I know that the low acceptance rate is scary, but if you’re decently qualified, there’s really no harm trying! If they decide that your application has potential but cannot justify a PSC Scholarship, fret not because they can refer your application to ministry-specific scholarships relevant to your career interest.

Overall/General Tips

TIP: A general strategy that should guide you across the different rounds of application is to think about your “brand” / life story. Ask yourself, what are you passionate about? What do you value? What are you really good at? It's helpful to distil 1-2 central themes / overarching narratives about you that you’ll showcase and come back to in your extracurricular activities, personal statement and interviews. For me, my story / unique selling point was my passion, experience and leadership for a specific kind of community service. So I featured numerous achievements related to that, explained the backstory and motivation behind this passion in my essay, and the leadership/personal lessons that came out of it in my interviews. Some other scholars opted for a different route, leaning more into their academic achievements (H3, Olympiads etc.). Choose what is true to you.

TIP: Additionally, do not just list your résumé in your essays or interviews. It’s good to talk about your achievements, but don’t simply list them, because that won’t differentiate you that much. Talk about the experiences, the feelings, the challenges, the lessons, the impact. It may also be helpful to provide specific statistics to allow PSC to get a better gauge of the magnitude and context of your achievements (e.g. the number of participants and rounds for an academic competition, the award criteria or the number of beneficiaries helped and total amount raised for community service projects).

TIP: Don’t be afraid to critique government policy in essays or your board interview. In my experience applying to multiple government scholarships, it seems that PSC is the most open-minded. Bear in mind that PSC is composed not of current civil servants, but major figures in academia, business, law etc. Who are not part of the civil service or the ruling party. BUT, your take must be informed, reasonable and nuanced. Don’t make blanket statements.

Stage 1A: Application Form + Essay + Supporting Documents

Application Form

You're provided a space to include up to 10 academic achievements, service and leadership experiences. They seem to pay special, but not exclusive attention to achievements that came after secondary school. Therefore, if you're still in JC/Poly, my earnest advice is for you to continually build your portfolio and challenge yourself. However, if you have major achievements in secondary school, do include them too!

You may also include any online courses/MOOCs taken on Coursera, edX etc. This is an especially helpful section for those applying during National Service because it's relatively easier to beef up even after graduating from school.

You have a space to include past public service internships (with government agencies and ministries like PA, URA or MSF). While it is a definite plus to have this, because it demonstrates some interest and familiarity with policymaking, not having is far from a death sentence. I know other PSC scholars who didn't have any prior experience who still made it in. It's also more important that the internship was a meaningful experience that gives you insights and things to talk about in interviews / essays, and a strong supervisor's recommendation letter (which can be included in supporting documents). Don't go for an internship just for the sake of the title, because it won't be of much value.

TIP: Please apply as early as possible. Do not wait until the deadline in March to submit!

TIP: If there are ministry scholarships you are interested in, you can indicate that you wish to be considered for them as well. If you’re rejected from PSC, at least you can be referred to the ministry-level scholarships.

Essay

During my year, we were given four essay options with a limit of 4000 characters. Some questions are more current-affairs-oriented, while others take a more personal angle. Just choose the option that allows you to showcase yourself, your achievements and aspirations the most. There is no one “correct” question to take, nor a single correct way to write.

However, if you choose current affairs questions, my advice is to make it more unique. Expect most people to write a generic GP-style essay. Incorporate your own personal experiences into the essay, if possible. Look for incisive points or interesting+non-cliche examples that may catch their eye.

You also don’t need to use bombastic vocabulary to impress; writing formally will suffice. The content is far more important.

Also, if it's possible, link your essay to your desire to apply for the PSC scholarship.

Just to give you an idea of some of the possible ways to write (don’t be constrained by this):

• (Current affairs question) In line with the aforementioned overarching narrative of community service that I had, I wrote about the lack of public spiritedness in Singapore, its possible causes and solutions. I commented on specific, relevant and recent government policies and made reference to a philosophical book I read. However, I also weaved in my own personal experiences finding fulfilment in volunteering as an illustration of how this lack of public spiritedness isn’t impossible to overcome. Finally, I linked this to my desire to join the civil service.

• (Personal question) Another friend of mine wrote about his experience going for competitions in a particular CCA that really challenged him and forced him to learn lessons that were relevant to policy making.

• (Current affairs question) Still another wrote about her passion and experience in volunteering in nature / environmentalism causes.

Stage 1B: Video Interview

Soon after you submit your application form and essay, you’ll receive an email with a link to a website, where you’ll give a video presentation. It’s really simple. You’ll film yourself answering 3 questions, 90 seconds each. The software will do the timing for you, and will immediately stop if you press stop, or if time runs out, whichever comes first. You get 1 min to read the question and prepare a response, and 3 tries for each question. Be prepared for standard interview questions like giving a short introduction about yourself, your reasons for applying and career aspirations.

My advice is to prepare some paper and writing material beforehand so you can plan out your responses. Make your points fleshy enough but concise. 90 seconds is a short time and you don’t want to be cut-off by the software mid-sentence.

Stage 2: Psychometric Test

Some JCs shortlist students to go for PSC’s psychometric testing even before the application process begins, but it’s completely alright if you didn’t go through this route (I was nominated to go but I skipped because it clashed with another commitment). If this is so, you’ll take psychometric testing after Stage 1. The test is usually held at Civil Service College in Buona Vista, and has three components:

• Numerical reasoning: essentially mental maths (you’re not allowed to use a calculator)

• Critical thinking: looking through arguments and evaluating their strength etc.

• Game-based assessment (GBA): tests your reflexes, your problem solving style, personality.

To practise for math and GBA, I’d suggest downloading brain game apps like Luminosity. Brush up on your O-Level math, multiplication table. Make sure you know how to calculate percentages (e.g. what’s 2% of 72) without a calculator (there are YouTube videos for that). For critical reasoning, do free Watson Glasner tests, which are quite similar to what you’ll see.

Don't worry too much about the GBA tests btw, just enjoy the games. In my year, it involved a series of roughly 8-9 games testing your reaction time, problem-solving approach, memory, appetite for risk, emotional intelligence, and response to game theory situations. After the test, you’ll receive a report detailing personality traits displayed during GBA.

Stage 3A: Psychologist Interview

If you’re shortlisted further, you’ll receive another email to arrange a slot for an interview with a psychologist. Typically ranging from 2.5-3.5 hours, (mine lasted close to 4 hours) this is known to be one of the more gruelling parts of the application. However, it's manageable as long as you come mentally prepared.

In my year, this was conducted online because of Covid, but it may return to physical interviews once that dies down.

You’ll sit down with a professional psychologist, who will ask a lot of personal questions regarding your family history/relationships/dynamics, your biggest achievements, challenges and leadership experiences. While I can’t reveal the specific questions, my advice would be to think through all these themes. Reflect on your life; its biggest moments, events, achievements, failures, core memories, relationships etc. and write them down. Trust me, you don’t want to be struggling to recall these for the first time during your interview.

Be prepared that these questions may seem invasive, especially if your family has sensitive histories (e.g. divorce, mental health issues). Some people get caught off guard and break down. I was told I could opt to not talk about anything I wasn’t comfortable with, but my encouragement to you is to try to share about them so PSC gets a better idea of who you are, how you’ve responded to these challenges etc. It also helps put your achievements (or failures) into context (e.g. ohh you didn’t do as well in this particular term because you were going through this). My psychologist was incredibly nice, so I felt comfortable enough to open up.

If you have mental health issues in the past or present, it probably won’t disqualify you. I suggest being honest about it here. From what I’ve heard, you should prepare your explanations about any mental health history beforehand so you can eloquently contextualise it; it can be hard to explain if you’re only thinking about this for the first time. They may be interested in why it happened, its severity, whether it's a past or present issue and what steps you’re taking to treat it. It helps if it was a past issue, something that didn’t affect your ability to function as a civil servant, and/or something you’ve sought help for (talk therapy with a psychologist, medications from a psychiatrist etc.) PSC seems pretty open-minded about this, so as long as it's not some severe disorder occurring now, don’t let this deter you from applying or disclosing the issue.

The questions asked will depend on you, the information you provided in your application form, and the information you provide during the interview. It flows like a semi-conversation. Treat it as such. It's definitely less formal than the board interview, but do still present yourself professionally and speak without too much slang.

They may also look at your application and ask questions about interesting aspects of it (hypothetical examples: I see that you had a lot of leadership positions in secondary school. Why did you not take any in JC? It looks like you had a lot of achievements in STEM, so what made you pursue a Humanities degree? etc.) These aren’t questions to shame or trap you; they just want to understand.

After you finish, you'll almost definitely go to the board interview, unless you did really badly for your psychologist interview.

Stage 3B: Final Board/Panel Interview

In this final stage, candidates are offered a 30-45 min interview with PSC’s Members, arranged on the PSC portal. They are usually conducted in a room in the Central Library (Bugis) with all or most of the PSC members.

Most often, it will only be the Chairman along with one or two other members asking you questions, while the others observe. You’ll answer three types of questions: administrative, follow-ups in previous application stage materials, and intellectual.

Administrative questions are asked by the Chairman (at least for me), and may pertain to your choice of country, major and university, so be prepared to answer such questions. Additional possible questions include your progress on other scholarship applications, your career preferences in the civil service (think about which ministries you like to work at the most). The idea behind these questions is probably to gauge whether you have a reasonable idea/plan for how you are going to approach higher education and civil service. They want to hear good/compelling reasons for your choices.

PSC Members may choose to follow-up on key elements of your psychologist interview (maybe a strength or a weakness that the psychologist identified) and/or your personal statement, so make sure you try to spot possible questions. However, because the interview’s short length, they probably will only ask 1-2 questions on this.

Finally, a PSC Member (probably someone closest to your university field of study) will ask you intellectual questions. While PSC board interviews have historically been known to ask really weird and obscure current affairs questions, there seems to be a trend towards asking questions most relevant to your interests (determined by your major). It seems like they want to see you at your strongest. While you definitely should read widely (e.g. Newspapers), you should also think about questions most relevant to your field, and its current developments.

TIP: You shouldn’t just be aware of current developments. You should be prepared to form opinions about them and/or explain their significance/implications.

TIP: As with the psychologist interview, they may pick up on weird or interesting parts of your application/background (e.g. why didn’t you choose this discipline for university, when you had so many achievements in it in JC? I see that you were rejected from all your university choices to the UK, why do you think that is?). Be prepared to answer them.

Medical Review

(Read this if you may have any past or present physical or mental health issues)

After you have been offered the PSC scholarship, there actually is one more hurdle you have to cross. Every applicant who is offered will be sent for a medical review with a healthcare provider on the year that you are to matriculate into university. If you have any past or present physical or mental health issues, I strongly encourage you to go to your respective specialists (e.g. psychiatrists) before the appointment and get a memo reflecting your current state of health, and submit this . During the medical review, basic physical checks will be conducted, along with an interview with the doctor to clarify what you have disclosed. If they deem that you are medically fit to matriculate into university, then your scholarship will be confirmed.

Additional Resources

• PSC’s official guide; relatively new, I wish I had this when I applied https://www.psc.gov.sg/resources/scholarship-resources?q=guides

• PSC Application Essay sample: https://standingonthismountaintop.wordpress.com/2017/02/15/my-psc-essay-psychometric-interivew-experience/

• PSC AMA on reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/SGExams/comments/uw172y/scholarships_psc_scholarship_ama/

Contributed by anonymous