Hello again! In this blog post, I'll be writing about why I had to reject UCL in more detail. I briefly mentioned this in my last post, so if you haven't read it yet, please do so! If you want to of course :D
Why I Wanted to Go to UCL
If I'm being COMPLETELY, 100% honest with you, my main goal with applying for universities was that I just wanted to study in the UK. At the time of applying, I really wanted to go to Cambridge. It has been a dream of mine since I was a kid to be accepted into Oxbridge, even though deep down I knew I didn't stand a chance. Since we had to choose 5 universities to apply to, I had to pick which universities to go to for the other 4. I didn't really do much research on the other UK universities because I was so dead-on applying to Cambridge.
Nonetheless, after doing a bit of research, I ended up really liking UCL because their modules were so interesting to me. Oh and the campus? Beautiful. Gorgeous. I really can see myself studying there. Plus, this uni is one of the highest-ranked unis in the world. I didn't want to pass the chance of applying there. So overall I applied to Cambridge, UCL, KCL, Edinburgh, and Warwick. Cut to early 2021, I got rejected by Cambridge, but fortunately (alhamdulillah) received conditional offers for the other four unis. I decided to pick UCL as my firm uni, and KCL as my insurance, even though they both have the exact same grade requirements. Kinda defeated the purpose of choosing insurance uni hahaha. I can only blame my irrationality on my bad mental health at the time, I seriously couldn't think clearly.
Here is my conditional offer letter |
And here is where I found out I got in! |
Why I Didn't Have Enough Funding But Still Chose to Apply
A bit of backstory before we continue: As a Yayasan Sabah scholar, I was only been given RM120k a year to study overseas. That's not even enough to pay for my tuition fees at UCL. Since I wanted to fly to the UK to study more than anything else, I was desperate to find other ways to fund myself to study (I didn't come from a wealthy background btw). I decided that I want to apply for other scholarships, even if that meant terminating my contract with Yayasan Sabah and having to pay them back all the fees that they had sponsored me. In hindsight, again, this was SUCH an irrational move. But that's what makes us human, right.
You might wonder: "Well, if you already knew Yayasan Sabah was gonna allocate this amount of money to you, which wasn't enough, why even bother applying through UCAS? Why didn't you pick other countries to apply to? Or just stay local?"
To answer that, 1) For some reason my brain chose to ignore the fact that I lacked the money to fly, and was hoping that if I just prayed hard enough a miracle could happen. It did not lol. 2) Other countries were also expensive as well. I wasn't really keen on studying anywhere else, I just wanted the UK experience. 3) Staying local was my final option if I ended up not securing any scholarship at all. And I was gonna choose to study at a foreign local university (Nottingham, Monash, Southampton, etc) because at least there are programs where I could study on their campus in the UK for a year or two.
I applied for 4 scholarships - Kuok Foundation, Yayasan Sime Darby (YSD), Yayasan Daya Diri (YDD), and Maybank. It was a lot of work. I got to proceed to the interview stage with both Kuok Foundation and YSD, but I got rejected by Maybank right after I applied because the course I was applying for didn't suit their criteria, and I didn't even hear back from YDD at all.
I was stressed. My mental health didn't get any better. I got rejected by 2 scholarships but honestly, that didn't affect me so much because I was numb already at that point. I just wanted to focus on my exams. I was burning out like a fire at the end of a matchstick.
Despite all that, I'm so thankful to have my friends constantly cheering for me and helping me throughout the whole process, because I would've drowned if it weren't for them. After talking to Zunnur about uni stuff and my problems (she had been one of my great listeners in KY), I decided to just give up that dream to study at UCL and to just study in UNMC (Nottingham), with her!
Me at my current university :) |
It honestly still stings a bit, knowing that I am qualified for UCL (I achieved their grade requirement), but I couldn't go because of something that I couldn't control. But I am gradually accepting this fact. I believe God has something so much better planned for me (even though I gotta be honest, I haven't been able to see it just yet). It still doesn't help to see all of your friends are out there achieving a dream that you had to give up on. Nonetheless, I'm genuinely happy for them, and I wish them all the best in their future endeavours! This experience was a huge slap in the face, but I did learn a couple of lessons that I wanna share:
- You can't go out of your way to change a decision that God had made for you, regardless of how badly you want it. Surely He has a better plan.
- Obsessing over something can really drive out all rationalities that your brain has out of the window. Therefore after this whole experience, whenever I have an important decision to make, I'm gonna really take my time in thinking through everything, and be as logical as possible.
- I learned how to manage my time better! Doing so much stuff at once has trained me on how to allocate time to each priority. This skill will definitely serve me in university.
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