KUALA LUMPUR: The first batch of top Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia students, who were promised Public Services Department (PSD) scholarships after their foundation studies, are now in a quandary due to PSD's delay in announcing its sponsorship criteria
MCA Youth chief Datuk Dr Wee Ka Siong said that the PSD had last year promised that these students who received 9A+ in their SPM in 2011 would get scholarships if they were offered a place in a top-ranking university recognised by PSD.
“But the PSD has not disclose the list of universities and courses that it will sponsor and the students who had been offered places by universities are not sure whether to accept the offers or not,” Wee told reporters.
He urged the PSD to disclose the full list of universities and courses as soon as possible to the students who recently completed the Sijil Tinggi Pelajaran Malaysia, A-levels, matriculation or International Baccalaureate programmes.
Dr Wee said the PSD had indicated that it would cover for pre-clinical studies if the student apply for medicine, dentistry and pharmacy, and if they earned a place in the 10 top universities, they would be offered a scholarship, likewise with the other courses.
“But what is happening now is, of the 10 universities, the students could not apply for the six universities in the United States (US) because they required a basic degree,” he said.
The universities in the US were Howard University, John Hopkins University, Stanford University, Yale University and University of California and Duke University.
The four universities in Britain - Oxford University, Imperial College London, Cambridge University and University College of London - only offer medicine and students could not apply for dentistry, he said.
Dr Wee said that some students had received offers for dentistry from second best universities as a result, and wondered if they would be sponsored.
“The choices are limited. Even though they had excellent results in A-levels, they can’t enjoy the scholarship promised,” he said.
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