It’s the time of the year again where anxious teenagers receive their GCE O-Level results and decide the next milestone of their education journey. Needless to say, it is a decision that will be life-changing - for the next couple of years, at least.

It’s also during this period of time that I am plagued with questions regarding which route is the better one and having advised numerous students throughout my years as an English & GP tutor, I’ve come up with an interesting personality profile that would (hopefully) give you some insight into choosing the most suitable pathway for you.

I have categorised the characteristics and distilled them into questions that you may ponder over before actually making an informed choice. Undoubtedly, the personality profiles I’ve come up with are to be taken with a pinch of salt as they are just light-hearted archetypes that I thought of to relate to the current Gen Zs.

First up we have the… JC DELULU GOLDEN RETRIEVER

• Ever optimistic about the future, you believe you can overcome any odds because you’ve gotten decent grades at the GCE O-Levels Examinations for most of the subjects. Surely, this means I can study right?
• You also enjoy school life where you get to hang out with classmates that mostly take the same subjects as you throughout the entire academic year and need not worry about having to keep adjusting to different classroom and social group dynamics as with poly courses and their different modules.
• Even if you don’t like your group members, there’s nothing to worry about! With the new pass/fail criteria for Project Work, you need not fret about burdensome group members who would pull down your grades and affect your overall UAS (University Admission Scores) at the end. Pass can liao! P.S. This only applies from 2026 onwards.
• As much as JC ‘haters’ hate to admit it, JC is the most direct route to university with The Straits Times reporting that 4 in 5 students who took the GCE A-Levels and International Baccalaureate (IB) exams enrol into university in 2023. On the other hand, 1 in 3 poly graduates matriculated at universities.
  • This means that a large proportion of JC students do enrol into local universities. But of course, this number is mainly because of this: Armed with just an A-Level certificate and minimal (if any) work experience, JC graduates do not really have any other options EXCEPT TO pursue further education. Poly graduates graduate with a diploma and can choose to decide to pursue university at a later stage in their life or not at all.
  • There are also certain highly competitive courses where it would make more sense to enter via the JC route, primarily because the course you wish to pursue is such a long and competitive one. Hence, if you can shave off a year or two - it would definitely free up some of your time and finances. Examples include pursuing a PhD or becoming a doctor or lawyer.
  • Of course, for those who are still unsure but just want to get into a top university, JC is the most direct option of getting to your desired destination faster!
• However, you might have to manage your expectations regarding your school exam grades - in other words, to quote a famous wise man on TikTok, DELULU IS THE NEW SOLULU.
  • Jokes aside, it is not at all surprising to see a dip in your grades for certain subjects that you used to score well in. This is because the transition from Secondary to JC can be huge and intimidating. Let’s not forget that you barely have a year to get used to JC life before your final year where you take your GCE A-Levels. Like hello? Where did the time go?!
  • Additionally, with the removal of mid-year examinations starting this year (2024) for JCs, it is even more difficult to track your progress quantitatively.
• This brings me to my next point, which is where tuition services come in. It is an open secret that almost every student in JC would receive some form of additional support for certain subjects. Call it ‘kiasu’ (a Singaporean slang for being afraid to lose out) but to condense an entire JC curriculum into less than two years (Mind you, JC1 starts in Feb and don’t forget to account for the school holidays!), it’s no wonder students feel the heat!
  • To bring you some form of comfort, at least the final A-Level exams is all that matters so never mind the string of failures and exam tragedies that trail behind you. Like a golden retriever with boundless optimism and cleverness, you surely will overcome and finish strong at the end!

Next, we have the… POLY WOLFPACK MAIN CHARACTER SLAY

• Wondering if the profile type seems like a jumble of Gen Z terms thrown all together randomly into one? … Yes, you’re probably right.
• I’ve got to be honest with you. Some poly students can be… scary. I’ve met those who would defend the poly route like their lives are on the line. Before I could even open my mouth to give any general objective advice, a random poly graduate would chime in vehemently with “POLY IS AWESOME! GO POLY!” as if they’re inviting you to join a cult.
• Even when scouring Reddit forums, the few emotionally charged opinions tend to be those who are strongly supportive of poly.
• Could it be a projection of insecurity where they lash out defensively if anyone so much as thinks that poly students ‘cannot study’ or are somehow ‘worse off than JC students’? Regardless, let’s look at the statistics because numbers don’t lie. The Straits Times reported that approximately 52 per cent of GCE O-Level student graduates were posted to poly in 2021. This means that in general, there ARE students who have done well enough at the GCE O-Levels but instead choose to pursue the poly route. Hence, this belief of poly students as being ‘less academically inclined’ is unfounded and false.
• Wondering if the profile type seems like a jumble of Gen Z terms thrown all together randomly into one? … Yes, you’re probably right.
• I’ve got to be honest with you. Some poly students can be… scary. I’ve met those who would defend the poly route like their lives are on the line. Before I could even open my mouth to give any general objective advice, a random poly graduate would chime in vehemently with “POLY IS AWESOME! GO POLY!” as if they’re inviting you to join a cult.
  • Even when scouring Reddit forums, the few emotionally charged opinions tend to be those who are strongly supportive of poly.
  • Could it be a projection of insecurity where they lash out defensively if anyone so much as thinks that poly students ‘cannot study’ or are somehow ‘worse off than JC students’? Regardless, let’s look at the statistics because numbers don’t lie. The Straits Times reported that approximately 52 per cent of GCE O-Level student graduates were posted to poly in 2021. This means that in general, there ARE students who have done well enough at the GCE O-Levels but instead choose to pursue the poly route. Hence, this belief of poly students as being ‘less academically inclined’ is unfounded and false. 
• As a Poly wolfpack main character slay (*cues distant howling awhoo awhoo!), you enjoy a dynamic environment where there is no fixed classroom and your classmates may not always stay the same. Additionally, you may be a student who prefers more hands-on application when learning. Just like a wolf, you prefer to be out in the wild howling at the moon instead of being a domestic dog being cooped up indoors (*casting bombastic side-eye at the golden retriever). 
• If you’re also the kind of student that doesn't mind group work and is willing to suffer from back aches from carrying your team members in projects that comprise a significant weighting of your overall grade for that module, poly route is for you! Just like in a wolf pack where you can be the Alpha, Beta, Omega or the Sigma in a group project, you’re unbothered because you’re the main character and your GPA can still slay the day away! 
• In all seriousness, if you intend to enter university via the poly route, you will need to be more consistent in your studies in order to maintain a good CGPA (Cumulative Grade Point Average based on the average scores across all your modules at the end of your poly life). A few wrong moves might derail you and you would need to work extra hard to bounce back and pull your CGPA back up and this can be mentally exhausting and frustrating for certain individuals.
  • Additionally, you may not have a conducive learning environment where everyone strives towards the same goal since not everyone entering poly desires to pursue a university degree thereafter.
• That being said, if you already know what course you wish to pursue, poly may be the better option.
  • A bonus would be that if you enter university and choose to continue in the same course (e.g. Business and Accountancy in Poly and then later, pursuing the same thing in university), you might be able to shave off a year or be exempted from certain modules.
• Lastly, a benefit would be that if all else fails, at least you have a diploma and you can enter the workforce with that while with an A-Levels certification, it is more to apply for universities directly, be it local or overseas.

That being said, regardless of which option you choose to pursue, remember that our grades and which pathway we choose do not entirely define us as individuals. There are many pathways to success. Ergo, I shall end with these parting words below.