It is incredibly important for you to source out the cheapest and the best tuition you can. Science or arts, you can’t just wing it and study on your own. You need a tutor to mark as Cambridge would and give feedback.
As for my personal experience with tuitions, I went for SINDA’s A level programme called Saadhana ($50/subject per month). The Math tutor was amazing. The Physics tutor was okay. Chemistry tutor was too fast for me. But I stuck with it from beginning to end because it was affordable, tutors were available to answer questions over the phone 24/7, and I made friends with the students so I could clear doubts anytime. From May to august I added on another Chem tuition (Chemstar Education in Jurong East, $320 per month). After that, I let go of the Chem tuition ( I did not have money to carry on two tuitions simultaneously) and got a private physics tutor instead. This guy was undergrad from NTU and I stuck with him from September to November. The craziest tuition experience I had was for GP. I went to Spring International School (also in Jurong East) which is actually tuition for PRCs who wished to take A levels in SG. The teacher had no experience teaching A levels so I was only charged $120 per month. All in all, I spent close to $4k-$5k on retaking. I worked part time selling pizza during the weekends to help out my parents a little. My siblings also pitched in to help with my tuition. That is simply the ugly truth of retaking, you can be as determined and disciplined as you want, but you also need money to go on.
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Regarding resources, I would recommend finding all the online websites you can to get notes that are different from what you already have. Here are some I know
Also (for students of science), if you have a friend who retained or just any junior from JC, get their I/C number and use their LMS account. LMS has videos for every topic in every subject with the most basic things explained. You can replay it a thousand times to understand everything, nobody will judge you. Students also like to enquire about how I studied so the following part is going to explain that:
You need to stay constantly motivated and that can be a little tiring. When you plan all the way to November be prepared to lose some weeks to circumstance because shit happens. My grandfather died in September and my relatives from India came over to stay for 3 weeks. I lost precious study time during those weeks. Be prepared for the worst. My family was very supportive of my retaking so I was lucky in that aspect. But you cannot just shrug off the embarrassment that comes with retaking. Although in the grand scheme of things, our mortification becomes a minuscule part, it really messes with your psyche. By the time August rolled around, I learned to laugh it off. The number of times I saw somebody I knew and suddenly became super interested in my phone’s home screen is just too damn high. The look of horror when you tell your juniors that you are retaking and the discomfort you’ll feel when your classmates discuss orientation camps during class gathering is all part of the experience. If you have believed everything that I have said so far, this is the most important part you need to trust me on: you will become a more mature person with higher tolerance for difficult times in life compared to most people. You will also value education a lot more than you used to.
Here is also another important piece of information. You are not the only one retaking. A LOT of people retake. They just don’t publicize it. Don’t trust people who tell you that they are taking a gap year because they are probably not. When people asked me what I was doing, I always told the truth because I was proud of retaking. That is the simple truth behind retaking A Levels in Singapore as a private candidate, it takes balls of steel to re-sit for your examinations especially with every tom, dick and harry telling you not to do it. All my classmates told me it was going to be a waste and my teachers were dead against it. But I went ahead and I did it anyway. I’ve learned to treasure the few people who stood by me all the way. So this is my last piece of advise: if you think you can improve your grades, don’t listen to anybody else, just do it. Retaking is not for the weak hearted. ALL THE BEST!!! |
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