5th August | National Public School, Rajajinagar (NPSR) & National Academy for Learning (NAFL)

National Public School, Rajajinagar & National Academy for Learning
5th August 2008
10:00 AM

Attendees:
1. Abel Sim
2. Deeptarka Hazra
3. Varun Ponnuru

The visit to National Public School, Rajajinagar elicited, for starters, a much better response than the visit last year. The principal of NPSR, Ms. Shantamma Gopalakrishnan kindly agreed to arrange for the students of a sister school of NPSR, the National Academy for Learning (NAFL) to attend the presentation as well. This resulted in one of the largest audiences that we have ever addressed and unexpectedly one of the keenest as well.

A Recap of Last Year:
Our expectations for NPSR were mild, given that the response from the students at the previous presentation was meek if not non-existent. Anirban and I had conducted last year's presentation and from the fact that most of the post-presentation questions were irrelevant to SMU, we concluded that NPSR students simply were not a suitable target audience. The school also doesn't have an established stream for commerce in high school unlike some other schools in Bangalore, and offers courses only in the sciences. This was and still is a major factor in their opinion of SMU as a strong varsity choice.

Questions asked:
However this time around, while the response was not overwhelming there were a fairly large number of questions raised and a considerably larger amount of interest shown. The questions mainly centered around finances, with the bond being a point of discussion. There were also questions surprisingly of SMU's offering in comparison to their usual choice of specialization i.e. engineering. I take this as a hugely encouraging sign that students are considering SMU as a strong first option in contrast to it being a viable backup. A very heartening comment came from one student in particular who thanked Deep after the presentation and said she was grateful that universities like us are "opening people's eyes" to options outside the conventional ones of engineering and medicine.

In terms of the demographics, if you will, of the audience - the larger number of people who asked questions were female and also were students from NAFL rather than NPSR. Nonetheless, the fact that some NPSR students did pose relevant questions is in itself a distinct improvement.

Conclusion:
Overall, this visit proved to be fruitful. Our relationship with the school and their principal Ms. Shantamma is budding and strong. She mentioned that she had recently been to Singapore to attend the launch of the Singapore branch of the NPS chain of schools. Given that the school is still young, we hope that future visits from the heads of the NPS schools will also mean a visit to SMU and a chance to grow our relationship with them further.

A visit to address the school next year is very likely and I forecast an even better response based on anecdotal evidence given by the principal that the number of students going abroad for their undergraduate studies is increasing. While the overall sentiment of students from NPSR and NAFL towards SMU is still cautious, there is potential to establish a strong reputation in these schools.