He got into poly on 6th try, and graduates among top of cohort

He achieves near-perfect GPA, receives ITE Upgrader award

- Gabrielle Chan

Despite five futile attempts to enter the polytechnic of his dreams, Mr Aloysius Lim was unfazed.

He finally succeeded on his sixth try and was accepted into Nanyang Polytechnic's (NYP) Infocomm and Media Engineering course. Three years on, the 24-year-old has excelled and graduated with a near perfect grade point average of 3.99 out of 4.

Mr Lim is one of 5,300 graduates from NYP's Class of 2024 and is also one of the polytechnic's top eight graduates.

On May 3, he received from Education Minister Chan Chun Sing the Tay Eng Soon Award for ITE Upgrader, presented to the most outstanding graduate who progressed to NYP from the Institute of Technical Education.

When asked how he felt when he eventually received the acceptance call from NYP, Mr Lim said: "I don't know how to explain the feeling, it's like I finally made it into my dream school after five years."

The former Greendale Secondary School student first wanted to apply to NYP in 2017, but did not qualify as he received an E8 in English language at the O-level exams. The minimum requirement to enter a polytechnic was a D7 for the subject. So Mr Lim, who grew up in a Mandarin-speaking family with his parents and an older sister, went to ITE College East and did a Higher Nitec course in cyber and network security.