Saturday, August 05, 2006

Violinist to go to Curtis afterall

With a $75K bond no less. Well, I guess it is a compromise.

Straits Times 5 Aug?

VIOLIN prodigy Ike See will get to pursue his dreams of becoming a top musician after all.

The 17-year-old has received the green light from the Defence Ministry (Mindef) to defer his national service while studying at the Curtis Institute of Music in the United States.

Mindef has given him the go ahead to study a two-year music diploma course, instead of a four-year degree programme,

After two rejections from the Mindef to defer for a four-year course, as a Ike decided to reapply for a deferment for a diploma programme.

He was rejected by Mindef the first time, which said that the diploma programme was too similar in nature to the degree course.

But the family continued to pursue the matter and sent in another appeal.

Their persistence paid off.

In a letter sent to Ike about a week ago, Mindef said that was prepared to grant Ike a two-year deferment after considering the appeal and assessing that the two-year diploma programme at Curtis is 'equivalent to the first education bar of GCE A levels and polytechnic diploma.'


Thankfully Mr Wang's prediction doesn't come true.

2 comments:

03S17 said...

There's a catch. He'll be going for further studies in Curtis after his diploma. Problem is, he needs to come back and do his NS, so he has no choice but to do a diploma first to keep his place secured, and then come back to serve his NS for two years, and then he goes back and continue.

A compromise, but a bad compromise nonetheless.

takchek said...

As I said somewhere before, the price to pay for being a male Singaporean.