Ask.fm FAQs – What To Do After SPM?

Assalamualaikum,

Somehow, in the midst of Skyping with him and doing my Calculus 3 homework #1, a weird idea popped up in my head. A good idea, nevertheless. Considering how my Ask.fm has been bombarded with a lot of post-SPM questions like scholarships, A-Levels / ADFP / studying abroad stuff, I figured I could compile some of the questions that I received with the answers as well and put them up here on the blog, so future SPM-leavers could refer to it if they want to.

Note: These questions are from the ones that I received at my Ask.fm, and most of them are from anonymous sources, so I actually have no idea who they are. Oh, and ignore the bad grammars / spelling in the questions, they’re killing me as well :/

Note 2: The answers are the actual answers that I posted on my Ask.fm, and are my personal thoughts and opinions, and therefore are subject to questioning. Nothing should be taken as the absolute truth, and I am not responsible for anything that happens should anyone take my answers as the definite fact, ’cause they might not be true. So, when in doubt, PLEASE DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH AND READING ABOUT THE TOPIC, thank you.

Note 3: Click Continue Reading to read the whole post.

Hai kak nazu 🙂 if dont mind, could you share with us what did you do during your 3months holiday ; i mean, when you were waiting for your spm result – spm leaver- 🙂

Hai 🙂

I don’t actually have a 3-months break. Straight away after my SPM, (I think a couple of days after Biology ended), I was on a school trip to Korea for a week plus. Got back to Malaysia, had a few days of rest, off to Australia for a family trip. Then got back to Malaysia again, rested for a while, then in January it was off to Kolej Tuanku Ja’afar again for A-Levels (I did my SPM there too as well), so yeah, it wasn’t much of a long break for me.

sye masih konfius nk pilih course ape, bile sye nk abroad semue tntg, bile sye nk ambik course yg sye nk pun ditntg, keluarga sye nk course yg sye x ske, mcm mne ye kakak?

Discuss lah elok-elok, kenapa dyorang tentang? And tengok diri sendiri juga, nilai diri sendiri, tengok kelemahan kelebihan.

Tanya diri sendiri, “Kenapa aku nak pergi luar negara? Kenapa aku nak belajar course ni? Apa gunanya untuk future aku? Layakkah aku nak buat benda ni? Mampukah aku untuk belajar ni? Sanggup ke berpisah dengan keluarga kalau pergi luar negara? Dah cukup bersediakah aku untuk belajar ni?”

Duduk dan bincang dengan ibu bapa. Dengar (AND I MEAN IT, DENGAR BETUL-BETUL) pandangan mereka, dan berikan pandangan anda. Bincangkan baik buruk segala options yang ada, then choose one.

saya minat bioteknologi tapi lepas saya buat uji kerjaya, bioteknologi bukan career yang sesuai dengan saya dan lagi satu, saya bagus dalam math and add math during my school years.. akak rasa sya patut teruskan utk biotech ataupun career yg lebih kepada kepakaran saya? 🙂

Minat tak semestinya anda boleh bawa course tu. 

Aku minat nak jadi doktor kanak-kanak, tapi aku tak suka menghafal. Tak nak ambil Medicine sebab tak suka belajar Biology. Minat tu minat la, memang best belajar Biology, tapi aku paling benci subjek menghafal, memang aku out.

So, yeah. Cari course yang boleh balance antara minat dan kebolehan / skill / kemampuan diri sendiri.

Kak nak tanya, I’m really interested in Islamic finance but taktahu macamana flow to get there. maklumlah budak baru habis spm,if you could share something about this course it would be really helpful. Thankyou Kak!! 🙂

Go look at the universities that offer Islamic Finance (one way to do this is check individual university’s official website and look at their academics page) and look at the requirements that they have. Probably if you want to do it locally, you’d have to do Asasi or Matriks. If you want to do it abroad, then A-Levels or IB would be okay. But first things first is to research the universities and look at their requirements.

and one more Kak, what is your opinion about a science stream student who further his study in accountancy. tak susah ke hidup macamtu? I mean they have no knowledge about basic acc at all. Thankyou Kak !! :))

Dude, I’m a Science stream student, I’m doing Actuarial Science, which, despite the ‘Science’ in its name, has nothing to do with Science stream whatsoever. I’d be taking Accounting, Finance, Business Management and other Business courses which I have no basic at all.

My mother was a Science stream student. She graduated from University of New South Wales in Accounting before becoming a Chief Financial Controller. Nothing to do with Science at all.

So it’s all up to you. If you really want to do something, then go ahead and put your 100% into it. As long as you’re willing to learn, nothing is ever hard.

can you help me?im SPM leavers…deeply in my heart i really dont have ambition….can you help me?im just follow the rules of life….i realized that my life have nothing and zero…

Take some time off, stop contacting the whole world, sit down by yourself and think. Think about what makes you happy, what makes you feel sad. It’s easier to take a piece of paper and write everything down. Write the time sin your life that you feel excited, sad and mad. It’d take some time, but you’d find your passion soon, insyaAllah 🙂

kak nazu, nak tny. kalau sekolah luar bandar, then sekolah tu tak aktif sukan sgt, layak ke dpt tawaran mane2? thanks 🙂

Layak je. Jangan risau sangat sekolah bandar ke luar bandar, kalau diri sendiri rajin and pandai ambil peluang, insyaAllah ok je 🙂

Hi! Im just puzzled abt sth. Org ckp ADFP and ACTP sama je kan? Selalu dgr ada orang cakap ADFP untung sbb 1 yr je. Then degree 3 yrs. Kalau ACTP kena buat 2 yrs and deg 3 yrs. So tell me apa yg SAMA nye? Or is ADFP punya degree 4 yrs – which makes both total 5 yrs?

ADFP setahun in Malaysia, then masuk university as a freshman, meaning you have four years to graduate. ACTP, dua tahun in Malaysia, masuk university as a transfer student, meaning ada 3 years left of university life.

should I take alevel in acturial science in malaysia before I fly to usa?

Errr, it doesn’t matter much. You can basically do whatever you want. There’s no one right way to a degree, you know.

which one is compulsory for me to take if to sit for if I were to go to usa like you?

Which one for what? You mean between IELTS, TOEFL and SAT? TOEFL, for sure. SAT depending on your universities.

I mean to go abroad which one is better between ielts and toefl?

It depends on where you are going. TOEFL is mostly for US universities, IELTS is more to UK and other countries.

why you really want to study abroad. What attracts you to US?

To be honest, I never really knew why I came to the US. Or why I chose to study abroad in the first place. All I knew was I wanted to study outside of Malaysia. I needed something new, something challenging. I was tired of the rigid education structure in Malaysia that limits my personal growth, that controls what I think and what I do.

I originally wanted to go to the UK. London, specifically. I wanted to meet all my friends, and I wanted to revisit the place I once lived in. But then, things happened during March – May 2012, and my plans changed to the States. So, here I am.

More information about why I came to the States can be found here: https://syazanazura.com/2013/11/why-study-in-usa.html

Do you think the university ranking is important? Or is it okay to just get a placement?

Personally, not really. In my opinion, I rather go for universities that are recognized for my chosen major. Say, I’m doing Actuarial Science, right? So I’d look for ranking on Actuarial Science and see which schools or universities has the best, or one of the best, Actuarial Science programs. Or, at the very least, have it certified by the Society of Actuaries (http://www.soa.org/)

So, despite Harvard, Yale and MIT being one of the best schools in the States, no, I did not apply. I did apply to Penn, ’cause its Actuarial Science program is quite good and it has one of the top business schools in the States. University of Wisconsin-Madison, for one, is a certified Centers of Actuarial Excellence (CAE), along with University of Iowa, UIUC and a few others. (source: http://www.soa.org/education/resources/actuarial-colleges/actuarial-college-listings-details.aspx)

A personal advice: Don’t just apply for a ‘placement’. Seriously, if you’re thinking that it’s okay just to get a placement, it means you only want to go to the States for the sake of ‘being a graduate from a US university’. You’re not really passionate about studying there. You’re not into the university. You’d be thinking, “Oh, as long as I have a bachelor’s degree from US, then I’m sure to get a job after graduating.”

You know what, you won’t. Graduating from the US or UK or any other countries does not make you more favorable from people graduating from local universities. It’s what you learn at the university that counts. If you go to university, become a plain and ordinary student with a normal life and graduate with an average GPA, heck, the employers are better off hiring a UM or UPM student with a CGPA of 3.50 and above with and excellent resume.

Just some thoughts for you to think about. 🙂

And, if you’re having doubts, prayer is always the way to go. Whether you’re a Muslim or not, pray to God for His guidance, you’ll find your way 🙂

If you are in my shoes,do you want to choose course with wide job opportunities or course that we’d love most(but ain’t wide job opportunities)

Try to get something in between? Find something that you like that would also have a wide job opportunities. 🙂 But think about the reason why you’re pursuing, don’t think too much about the future. It can change, you’ll never know 🙂

Oh, and the person who asked me something like “Do you think Act Sci is the one for you?” and stuff like that, I accidentally deleted the question when I tried to change tabs on my phone, so I couldn’t answer you properly.

To be honest, I have no idea. That question was on my mind a couple of weeks ago, when I attended a talk by Northwestern Mutual. I was thinking, “Am I doing the right thing, pursuing Act Sci and heading into the Business world? Is this right?”

I never really thought about going into the Business world, and to be honest, I’m quite afraid myself. I never thought of going into Business-like majors, and I don’t think I actually have the same passion for Business as I have for Journalism or that sort of stuff.

But then again… I trust my heart and God’s plannings. Before I took up this MARA loan, I prayed istikharah for one week, and Alhamdulillah, my heart feels calm and light as I moved to INTEC. I might not understand the reason I’m here and why I’m pursuing what I’m doing, but I trust my heart and my instincts, and I’m looking forward to what the future brings. 🙂

Have you ever felt like your parents expect too much from you, straight A pluses, 4 flat, dream job, (yes ypu can do it, but the burden is too much at times), so, kak nazu, how do you cope with these things? 😀

I’d be lying if I said I’ve never felt like the burden’s too much, but when you think about it, if you were never given a high expectation, how would you ever reach the full potential that you are born to do? Pushing yourself to the extreme will help you to fulfill your dreams and hopes, so in a way, it kind of motivates me.

Whenever things get a little bit too stressful for me to handle (or I just can’t go on anymore), I’d just take a day off from my life, and do totally random things like watching Harry Potter movies one after another, hangout with friends, eat and sleep or things like that. I find comfort in small little things like that, and it’d just make things a lot more bearable.

Justify why actuarial science 🙂

To be honest, I have absolutely no idea. Mum said no to Engineering, Computer Science and basically any other majors that’s not related to business. Dad didn’t really mind, but he was keen on me taking Medicine. As for me, I hated Medicine, and I never actually thought of going down the business path.

In 2011, someone came into KTJ for A-Levels. His name was Aiman Sanudin, one of the coolest seniors you can ever have. He told me about Actuarial Science. And somehow, from that day on, the idea of studying Act Sci got stuck in my head.

I can’t say I know much about Act Sci, or what it actually is and all, I’m pretty much going with the flow at the moment. Going where my life would take me, that kind of thing.

My heart has been quite calm in pursuing this journey so far, so insyaAllah I’m on the path He wanted me to be. :3

Kak how to study oversea like you? I mean, the spm result, the scholarship, muet etc

MUET tak perlu. IELTS and TOEFL, yes, depending on where you want to go. SPM results depends if you want to find a scholarship, which, of course, you would need to get good grades.

Ultimately, ‘getting a scholarship’ does not mean that you get an automatic ticket to a university abroad. You’d have to work hard to gain admissions by yourself 🙂

How would you respond if someone says that being an actuary is haram as the income may come from interest and usury? I know the fact that you have not take any actuarial subjects yet, but it’s good to know what’ll you be studying. 🙂

Well, that’s all the more reason to study and try to change how things work in the business world, right? 🙂

Which one you think the most hardcore? IB,A-levels or ADFP?

Define ‘hardcore’.

I personally question my decision of taking A-Levels and ADFP, ’cause I think I am more of an IB kind of person. But then again, I did not regret taking up both A-Levels and ADFP. A-Levels is… Hmm… OK. But out of A-Levels and ADFP, I prefer ADFP better.

I wanna be like you one day 😀 As in go out to US to further my studies. I wanna go to Yales but the idea feels far-fetched and harder than even trying to lick your own elbow :((((

Never think that a dream is too far away, when in fact, a dream starts from the heart. Just try your best, and even if you didn’t get into Yales for your undergrad studies, there will always be another chance during your postgraduate, if you decide to continue. But whatever it is, never give up. Just try your best. At least you’re brave enough to try, as compared to someone who’s too scared to even try.

Okay, so that’s basically it for this first part of Ask.fm FAQ’s. I have another set of questions about scholarships, MARA and interview stuff, so I would post that one up soon, insyaAllah.

Pardon me for the long post, but I figure this is quite necessary so I wouldn’t have to answer the same questions again and again and again. And perhaps it could help out those who are still looking for their pathways after SPM.

Until next time, stay awesome everyone! 🙂