Whether your child is on national service, or has decided to take a gap year, Global Indian International School has got their back!
Most international schools in Singapore have a dedicated careers or university counselling team to help your kids plan their next step after graduation. However, schools usually support existing students with university applications for immediate admission. So what happens when your kid is keen to take a gap year; or if they have national service (NS) obligations after school?
Here’s the good news: Global Indian International School (GIIS) believes in supporting its students beyond their school years, and has been helping its alumni navigate the complex realm of university applications – even from their bunks during NS!
Career and university counselling support for any student
Photography: Global Indian International School
Rather than using a cookie cutter approach, GIIS’ Career Counselling team tailors its university application support according to each student’s profile. Factors like interests, strengths, career goals, and academic performance are all taken into account, so students will receive the support and guidance that are aligned with their needs.
GIIS students can expect this in the form of one-on-one counselling sessions, guidance on writing personal statements and essays, getting the right recommendation letters, and staging interviews for students applying into competitive courses or scholarships. Besides these, the Career Counselling team will help students prepare an application strategy too, ensuring they have a diverse university shortlist to cover ‘reach’, ‘target’, and ‘safety’ ones across different regions.
On top of that, GIIS students have access to a wide range of tools and resources for free. Personality assessments to suss out your child’s strengths? Check. Career profiling to map out your kids’ dreams? Check. The school’s career counsellors will also use the data from these tests to provide university suggestions, as well as recommend further support in the form of webinars, podcasts, and relevant university alumni connections. Last but not least, GIIS regularly organises university fairs for students and parents to learn more about their shortlisted courses and universities.
GIIS alumni can reach out to the counsellors… even on weekends!
The school’s Career Counselling team is no stranger to the challenges their alumni face during NS. In fact, the school processes university applications for 25 to 30 full-time national servicemen (NSF) every year.
Photography: Global Indian International School
The team understands that weekdays can get really hectic for NSFs, so they’ve made themselves available on Saturdays to support these alumni. One of GIIS’ 2024 International Baccalaureate (IB) cohort Parth Khurana explained, “Managing training as a firefighter and college applications was challenging during NS. I’m grateful that my counsellor Ms. Seema Kaushik was open to helping me navigate the process even outside of her office hours. Whether it’s writing my recommendation letter or answering my questions while I worked from my bunk after training, her guidance made the process manageable.” He also shared that he has managed to receive offers from Georgia Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon University to study computer engineering.
Rest assured that your kids are in good hands at GIIS
As Ms. Kaushik, GIIS’ Lead Career Counsellor puts it, “The Career Counselling team at GIIS provides comprehensive support to students throughout their college application process, and we remain committed to assisting NS and gap year students as much as possible.”
The results speak for themselves too, as more than 300 GIIS graduates have been placed in the world’s top 20 universities in the last five years, including the University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, University of California, Berkeley, and National University of Singapore. The school’s IB Diploma Programme World Topper Srindhi Sundar is one of them, receiving offers from four top UK universities (including Imperial and the University of Edinburgh) to study medicine after taking a gap year. She credited the Career Counselling team for her achievement, “I received invaluable support from the GIIS career counselling team: from submitting my UCAS application and obtaining important documents, to giving me personalised guidance and encouragement. They made the application process much smoother and manageable.”
Find out how your child can benefit from GIIS’ robust career and university guidance support by speaking to the school’s admissions team today.
This post is in partnership with Global Indian International School.
