<p>galileilei:
i guess to explain why singaporeans are so overly represented at US unis you have to consider the following:
1. in international comps (like i_o except imo), spore performs much better than what her size might suggest. so there's a very qualified pool in the first place.
2. singapore students learn english, so this really helps them in things like SAT and essays. just in a single sch like rjc, there's soooooo many ppl scoring 2200++ (the mean score is 2100 i believe)
3. there's no really famous, reputable universities in spore (maybe you can make a case for NUS medicine), in the mould of beida in china, ntu in taiwan, oxbridge in uk etc, so for the very top students, they mostly aspire to go overseas rather than stay.
4. many spore students can pay full with local scholarships, so many schs are more than willing to take them to increase diversity while not having to touch their preciouos endowments.
and theres of course other points as well</p>
<p>hmm your point 2 and 4 are new to me.
2. In my opinion, NUS is not bad, many asean students want to come here to study. but for self conscious singpapore students who want to distinguish tehmselves, i guess NUS is not an option bah.</p>
<ol>
<li>so singaporeans applying for FA are at a disadvantage?</li>
</ol>
<p>this is really off-topic: why singapore don't do well in IMO? actually singapore won its first gold medal in 1995, but that year questions were easy... mnay would say math is just too hard, i wouldn't say so. However, I guess that one major difference of IMO with other I<em>O is this: IMO has a longlist of problems contributed by ALL participating countries, as opposed to other I</em>O. this makes IMO consitently hard, regardless of the host countries. and who propose these problems? good problem proposors are also good olympiad trainers too: you can forbid them from talking about the problems they propose, but you can not forbid them from teaching their ways of thinking to students. Singapore need good problem proposors: Singpoare can't propose its own problem for SMO second round.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>definitely is right. in vietnam, according to my best friend, it is insanely difficult to get above 2200. that's coz of the low standard of english teaching there. you definitely won't be able to see confused_vnmese's SAT score (2330) among vietnamese students who remained in vietnam.</p></li>
<li><p>i would say so. UIUC, UMich, Cornell, Berkeley. i believe a*star even has some sort of agreement with UIUC and Umich.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>fiona_
i think applying for finaid as an international severely reduces your chancse for most schs, esp Upenn, Columbia, Stanford and basically all the non needblind schs</p>