She studied hard and was over the moon when she found out she had obtained a perfect 4.0 cumulative grade point average (CGPA) in her STPM examination.
The excited teenager from Puchong, Selangor, immediately applied for medicine, dentistry, pharmacy and bio-medical courses with Universiti Malaya, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and Universiti Putra Malaysia.
But her excitement turned to sadness when she was offered a course in veterinary science at Universiti Malaysia Kelantan.
“Yes, I did state veterinary science as one of the secondary courses in the admission form, but I was confident that with my good results, I could get medicine or dentistry,” she said.
Chai said what hurt her most was when her friend who obtained a CGPA of 3.92 was offered dentistry in USM.
Her mother, housewife Tham Ah Yeing, said her daughter studied hard as she wanted to support the family.
“She was very sad when she found out she was offered only veterinary science. She could not accept it,” she said.
Choong Yong Sheng was one of the 4.0 scorers who was not offered any place at public universities.
“I was very happy after receiving my STPM results, and I had high hopes of gaining a place to study medicine at one of our local universities.
“I didn’t expect to be left out and given nothing,” said Choong.
The 20-year-old from Penang added that he only applied to study medicine at public universities offering the programme, and would not accept any course that was not among his options.
Matriculation student Deveshini Uthandi, 20, who scored a CGPA of 3.96 was devastated when she learnt that she did not make it to the list of successful applicants to the IPTAs.
“I had wanted to make my family proud by being the first in the family to enter a public university.
“I always wanted to be a doctor and because it is not cheap to study medicine privately, I worked very very hard to do well in my studies,’’ she said.
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