Story | Ryan Yeo (he/him), Managing Editor
Photo | Martin Choo (he/him)
Deferred matriculants to Yale-NUS College will be offered automatic admission to the New College and the College of Humanities and Sciences (CHS), Laura Severin, Yale-NUS Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, said in an email to deferred matriculants last Friday.
The email follows last week’s announcement that Yale-NUS College and the University Scholars Programme will no longer be admitting new students, precipitating the closure of both colleges to form a New College. The decision has already received significant backlash from Yale-NUS students and faculty.
In another email to deferred matriculants and their families, the Admissions and Financial Aid team also invited them to a town hall to address their concerns. According to the email, speakers at the town hall will include “senior leadership from NUS, Yale-NUS College, and the University Scholars Programme.” It did not specify who exactly will be attending.
The Octant gained access to the emails via a deferred matriculant, who preferred to remain anonymous. He is currently holding on to an offer from Yale-NUS as he is a full-time National Serviceman.
“I think that the guaranteed offer to the New College and CHS was meant to be reassuring to deferred matriculants, but I felt quite saddened,” the deferred matriculant remarked. “Personally, I accepted the offer based on my impression of the Yale-NUS community when I visited the school and heard from seniors.”
“To know that NUS is so willing to move deferred students to the New College as soon as possible indicates a lack of care for the community that a decade of Yale-NUS students have painstakingly built up. That, to me, is most regrettable.”
Kai Chen, another deferred matriculant originally slated to matriculate in 2022 due to National Service obligations, also expressed dissatisfaction at the automatic admission offer. He said: “There are many benefits of being a Yale-NUS student, such as the extensive Common Curriculum, the four-year guaranteed residential experience, and the need-blind financial aid [for Singaporeans].”
“There is insufficient justification as to how the offers from the New College or CHS would be of similar value to Yale-NUS.”
UPDATE: Since the article was published, new information has been released to deferred matriculants. Deferred matriculants have since been offered automatic admission to the New College as well as all other courses of their choice at NUS except Medicine, Dentistry, Law, and Music. Read our update here.