Failure not a roadblock to success for Nanyang Poly grads
Nanyang Polytechnic graduates buckled down after poor PSLE results
Mr Toh Xin Ran was devastated when he received an aggregate score of 150 for his Primary School Leaving Examination (PSLE).
It is now a distant memory, as the 23-year-old will graduate tomorrow at the top of his cohort in the Sport & Wellness Management course at Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP).
An avid wrestler, he will also receive the Sport Singapore Gold Medal and the Cheers Holding Award from Mr Lim Teck Yin, CEO of Sport Singapore.
Mr Toh had mixed with the wrong crowd in his younger years, until his sister's death in 2011 shook him up. He told The New Paper: "My sister was the brightest in the family. She got into the top JC and had good scores. When she passed away, it was like a wake-up call for me to do something with my life."
He was 16 when his sister died of a non-transmissible disease that led to kidney and lung failure at age 20.
Today, he has embarked on his own start-up, Travenger Hunt, which aims to transform the way people travel by including a scavenger hunt in their trips where they look for clues to find their next destination.
Another NYP graduate, Mr Pawandeep Singh Sekhon, 21, also had a PSLE aggregate score of 150.
He told TNP: "I was just a normal, average person who didn't study too hard. I thought I could at least get into the Normal (Academic) stream, but I was recommended for Normal (Technical) instead. I was very disappointed in myself.
"I studied really hard as a kind of redemption and eventually got into Normal (Academic)."
Mr Singh, who got his Diploma in IT from NYP on May 2, has been accepted into the Bachelor of Computing Science at the National University of Singapore (NUS).
Mr Toh, who has received offers from NUS, the Nanyang Technological University and Singapore Management University, is working towards securing a scholarship to study overseas.
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