National scholar: Your first-choice school does not define your future

Na­tion­al Schol­ar­ship win­ner Dr Brit­tney Sid­hooram has en­cour­aged Sec­ondary En­trance As­sess­ment (SEA) grad­u­ates to re­main com­mit­ted to their ed­u­ca­tion, even if they are not placed in their first-choice sec­ondary school.

Sid­hooram de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress on Tues­day at the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny of her al­ma mater, Fe­lic­i­ty SDMS Pri­ma­ry School, held at the Pas­sage to Asia Restau­rant in Ch­agua­nas.

Re­flect­ing on her own SEA ex­pe­ri­ence, the 2019 Na­tion­al Schol­ar­ship re­cip­i­ent re­vealed that she was not ac­cept­ed in­to her first-choice school.

“I want to share some­thing per­son­al with you,” she told the grad­u­ates. “I re­mem­ber the ex­cite­ment, the nerves, and then the dis­ap­point­ment when I re­alised I had not been ac­cept­ed in­to my first-choice school.

“My heart dropped. It felt like things had not gone ac­cord­ing to plan. But look­ing back now, I can hon­est­ly say it be­came one of the best things that could have hap­pened to me.”

She said the school she even­tu­al­ly at­tend­ed pro­vid­ed friend­ships, op­por­tu­ni­ties and life lessons that helped shape her fu­ture.

“One day, you will re­alise that life some­times takes us ex­act­ly where we are meant to be, even if it is not where we orig­i­nal­ly planned. What­ev­er hap­pens on re­sults day, cel­e­brate your­selves. Your school does not de­fine your fu­ture or lim­it your po­ten­tial.”

Sid­hooram re­mind­ed stu­dents that SEA rep­re­sents years of ded­i­ca­tion and per­se­ver­ance.

“SEA is not just about one ex­am­i­na­tion. It is about years of dis­ci­pline, per­sis­tence, sac­ri­fice, and growth. It is about be­com­ing some­one who can face pres­sure and con­tin­ue mov­ing for­ward.”

She al­so ac­knowl­edged the chal­lenges stu­dents faced while prepar­ing for the ex­am­i­na­tion, in­clud­ing long hours of lessons, work­sheets, past pa­pers, af­ter-school class­es, and the pres­sure to suc­ceed.

Prin­ci­pal De­nesh Bhag­wan­deen high­light­ed the school’s strong aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance, not­ing that over the past three years about 70 per cent of stu­dents achieved over­all SEA scores of 60 per cent and above. He added that two stu­dents placed among the top 200 per­form­ers in the 2025 SEA ex­am­i­na­tion.

Bhag­wan­deen re­mind­ed grad­u­ates that suc­cess still re­quires hard work de­spite ad­vances in tech­nol­o­gy and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence.

“The world has be­come bor­der­less. In­for­ma­tion is lit­er­al­ly at your fin­ger­tips, but there is no such thing as in­stant suc­cess. Suc­cess still re­quires hard work,” he said.