4th August | NPS Koramangla

Date of Visit: 4th August

Time of Visit: 2 PM

Contact Person: Ms. Lakshmi Rao, Principal

Attendees:

Abel Sim

Anirban Dattagupta

Deeptarka Hazra

At National Public School, Koramangla (NPS K), we addressed an audience of about 50 people. This was our first visit to the school. However, getting appointments wasn't an issue as four of the Bangalore Ambassadors came from one of its sister-concern schools.

The students were initially addressed by Abel who got to know some of them better through some chit-chat sessions before the presentation. The audience consisted of primarily grade 12 students, all from the science stream. This was because the school hadn't launched its commerce stream at that point of time. Initially, most of them didn't seem too interested as they were all inclined towards engineering or medicine. However, as we went further on, they seemed more and more interested.

The details about SMU were provided by Abel and the ambassadors were there primarily to share their experiences at SMU being students from Bangalore, something the audience could very closely relate to. We spoke about CCAs and the kind of exposure we got from it, activities inside the class room, the way we were taught and also about the daily life of an SMU student. The fact that SMU students had around 3 hours of classes a day got most of them interested in the university. We also mentioned how different this learning experience was from the stereotypical engineering in India and convinced them that courses offered in SMU was definitely a good option to have.

Another thing that worked to our advantage was the facts and figures we had with regards to salaries upon graduation and job offers before graduation. Being in their final year, most of them knew the kind of salaries and job offers engineering or medicine students in India received. So, they had a standard to compare it against. The main reluctance we faced was their apprehension to leave India for future studies and being away from home. A very small percentage of Indian students actually go abroad for under-graduate studies, primarily due to it being very expensive. However, these issues were addressed later on in the Q & A session where we gave them an accurate break down of how affordable and safe Singapore was. 

This was the driving factor in the Q & A session because students are usually apprehensive to ask the first question. The expenses topic sparked off interest in other topics as well and there were various questions about the double degree program, the variety of majors, non-academic matters, etc. Overall, the response was healthy and a good number seemed interested as we ran out of brochures very quickly.

After the presentation, we met the Principal, Ms. Lakshmi Rao. The meeting was more an informal one as she knew both the ambassadors very well, having taught them in high school. We were informed that about 10% of the students from NPS (K) go abroad to pursue their undergraduate education every year. This was a pretty small number compared to some of the international schools we visited. However, looking at the enthusiasm of the students after the presentation, it won't be surprising to see this number go up with Singapore contributing significantly.