Shine Your Way – Why I Chose To Study In UCSI?

Hi, it’s Hyanne again!

Time flies, it’s been more than a month since my first blog post. And as you can see the title, I am going to write about my journey to my current university – UCSI University. Strange enough, I rarely talk about my experiences of transition from high school to university and how I eventually settled down in UCSI, probably this was somehow a quite struggle story to myself. However, when I decided to write about these – as it is one of the required topics in Student Ambassadors programme – I found that it is in fact a story full of emotional, dramas, expectations, disappointments, adventures, happy and tears. Surprisingly, it is wonderful enough to look how a 18-year-old young girl by the time, struggled for her future and eventually she becomes what she wants to be today.

Just hoping that, you will enjoy my story and probably it can benefit you in some ways.

On 3 March 2016, the results of SPM 2015 were released. Thanks to God, I managed to become one of the seven SPM 2015 straight-As students in my secondary school. With 11 As on hands, I was hoping that I could grab a chance to enrol in Malaysian Matriculation Programme or ASASIpintar, the pre-university programme offered by Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). On the other hand, I was enthusiastic to survey on several private universities that I was interested, in which UCSI was in my list.

In fact, my parents and I went to visit UCSI University before the release of SPM 2015 result. At that time, I went there with my major interest in Psychology, and the second choice of Architecture. The reason why I chose to pursue Psychology was because I had no deep interest in science subjects even though I enrolled in science stream back in high school nor I had no knowledge in art subjects, such as Accounting, Economics and Business, thus I thought Psychology can be the best choice for me. While for Architecture, it was because it is the combination of science and art, one that I’ve learnt in high school with the latter which I was most interested in (my academic route to getting an Art or Design degree was banned at the first place by my traditional mind-set parents who thought that “Art or Design graduates cannot find money”). However, the brief visit to UCSI on that time was not fruitful to me – my conservative parents thought that pursue a degree in Psychology was not as good as study those mainstream programmes such as Business and Engineering. In addition, Cheras is quite far away from our home (we have spent 4 hours in car for the travel duration plus finding the routes to UCSI). With the expectations that I might get into the Matriculation programme or ASASIpintar, I didn’t comment much about these.

However, unfortunately, I was not shortlisted for ASASIpintar, not even Matriculation programme in the end! I was disappointed and now I need to decide what private tertiary institution that I want to go. With the elimination of Psychology programme and UCSI University in my list at earlier time, my father suggested me to go for a Management programme in Multimedia University in Melaka, with the reasons that it is located in my hometown, and my elder sister was MMU’s current student. I rejected this idea because I had no interest in studying Management even though it could be a better choice from my parents’ points of view. Therefore, I registered myself to pursue Architecture in Infrastructure University in Kajang, with a brief survey that it is nearer to us, despite that it has cheaper tuition fee in Architecture programme compared to other universities. However – unfortunately again – my parents did not favour the study environment in my selected university. As a result, Infrastructure University was eliminated from my list too.

At that time, I was disappointed, depressed and stress enough to see all these happened. It was because my friends around me were all went to pursue their further studies, and I myself already missed the registration date for Form 6 and many May or June intakes for other private universities. Other than that, I started to blame my parents to reject my requests again and again. I could not stop myself from thinking about that I was such a failure – I was left far behind from my friends, I could not make my own decision, and it was an unknown for my commencement of further study…….

My parents noticed my depression and had a deep talk with me. They told me that it was normal for me at this age, to have such miserable confusions about what to study and concerns about the consequences – some programmes that you like might have cheaper tuition fee but it was hard to find a job in the future, some programmes you might interest in but the tuition fee was unaffordable, and also there are programmes that are cheaper and trendy but you were not favour for. Besides, parents have their own reasons for being selective to their children’s requested institutions for further study. It was because they have their own responsible to bear the financial accountability and they always hope for the best for their children in the future. After this deep talk, I soon relieved and received a good news from them – they decided to enrol me in UCSI University, because they thought UCSI could be the best university after we paid many visitations to different universities.

In the middle of July at the same year, I went to UCSI University again for registration, accompanied by my parents. It was also the time where we met a nice academic counsellor in UCSI, who himself was a Psychology graduate from UCSI, and he managed to clear many confusions that my parents and I had. UCSI is a praxis university in which it emphasises the practical experiences for its students, hence as a UCSI student, I might have the opportunity to experience 3 different internships in my degree years. Other than that, UCSI offers RM30 million in scholarships for prodigious students in which I can apply in order to lessen the financial burden that my parents might have. Despite the fact that UCSI located in a very convenient area for food and entertainment, it is also near to the TBS where students can easily access to any public transportations. In the end, with the supports of my parents and followed my heart, I finally registered myself as a Foundation student leading to Psychology programme in UCSI University.

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And back to the year of 2019, I am now a Year 2 Semester 3 Psychology student, with UCSI Trust Scholarship on hands. Despite I have went through a wonderful Foundation year and my degree life in UCSI so far, I am also actively participating in extracurricular such as Student Council, Psychology Student Association, MyBuddy Programme and Student Ambassadors programme.

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I am grateful for what I have went through in all these year, I have tasted bittersweet in selecting for my future study as well as shaped myself into a confident, thoughtful and independent person that can account to myself. Approaching to my final year in degree, I started to feel that it is difficult to part from UCSI, but I also understand that UCSI has prepared me a better person to face the challenges in the future.

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Last but not least, a few words to those who are experiencing the same situation that I had – please keep the faith in yourselves, the best thing is always worth for the times.