Disclaimer: Despite my criticisms of the school, I am by no mean trying to discourage anyone from going to ASpi. ASpi is in fact, a decent pre-university programme that has amazing future prospects (including a very high chance of getting into top public Malaysia universities). Regarding my later criticisms about the learning culture as you would see, I strongly believe that it's not about the school, but rather about how you make use of the resources there. I have friends who enjoy joining debate/MUNs for fun, or explore Biology beyond what they learnt in school because they love the subject itself.
Ok firstly here is a short quiz... teng teng teng
- Do you want to study biological/health science courses (eg: Medics, Densitry) in UKM?
- Do you want to study popular courses in UKM (eg: engineering, CS)?
- Do you want to study in UKM?
If you answer YES to any of these, then YES please come to ASASIpintar. That's because The UKM admissions office will choose its own foundation student over students from other Pre-U at any given day. However, in contrast to “Asasi Tertutup” like Asasi Sains Universiti Malaya, where you are guaranteed a spot in UM, ASpi is “Asasi Terbuka”. This means you have the freedom to apply to other local universities through UPU, but that also means you also have the risk of not getting admission to UKM. Also, if you answer "YES" to Q1, then ASPI IS MADE FOR YOU. In my very humble opinion ASPI is no different than a "pre-med" school with nearly everyone aiming for Medics. And even the atmosphere in school reflects it (teacher scolding us for "how are you gonna be a good doctor", and we had a visit to UKM hospital).
If you answer NO or "MAYBE BUT I WANT TO LEAVE MY OPTIONS OPEN" then NOOOO DONT COME ASPI. But before I spread my Anti-ASPI propaganda here is some goooood things about ASPI:
- FREEDOM. Other than attending classes, there's basically no other restrictions. WIFI closes at 12AM? Never heard of that. Curfrew? It's legal and normal to lepak mamak until 3am.
- EARLY UNIVERSITY LIFE. We have only two persons per room and it's relatively comfortable compared to those 4-ppl room you see in Matrikulasi. A lot of sports here too like futsal basketball badmintion ping pong yes. You can use any UKM facilities too and I like to study at the 24/7 library. And There's a bus to MRT every 30 minutes too so you can go a lot of places. Also we don't have limited food choices there's a lot of kafes here.
- TEACHERS. Are you from those schools where teachers don't enter class. Don't worry the lecturers here are very responsible and are very helpful when you ask them. And they will make sure to replace any missed classes.
- FRIENDS. As usual it's the people that defines your experience. You will meet fun people I guarantee you. You will also have a good environment that encourages (definitely not peer pressured) you to study because in ASPI everyone study around the clock.
- LABS. Ok practical experiments here are actually quite frequent (every other week) and really fun. PERMATA lab has almost all the apparatus and materials you need. We even get to dissect a mouse too.
Ok. *Put on my propaganda hat* Now the good things ends here. TIME FOR WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER EVER EVEN THINK OF COMING ASPI.
- "I can't wait to learn more fun things. You know that physics chapter in SPM, it's pretty fun and I wanna learn more about it."
NO. YOU DO NOT COME TO ASPI TO ENJOY LEARNING. It's syllabus is horrible😭😭. There isn't a standardized syllabus unlike STPM (which may be a good thing) BUT THE THING IS THERE ISN'T ANY GOOD REFERENCE/TEXTBOOKS TOO. Your only source of learning is wellll lecture slides and "tutorials" (or assignments) given by teacher. Sureee you might hear teacher says "Hey go learn yourself from other books" but it's not practical cuz exams is from lecture slides anyway.
And there's so much information you can fit into lecture slides. If you've read other pre-u textbooks you know it would be like telling a story, telling you the fun part the history of this scientist, its application, some different examples question and explanation. Yeah... about that... you are only getting the main point in slides. And by main points i mean formula and some questions. You are not even gonna learn the derivation behind it.
For example, here's a slide from thermodynamics isothermal process
And here's one from STPM.
Mind you, the STPM reference book one is already very simplified and in point forms summarised. If I truly wanna learnt something I would refer to a proper college-level textbook I would refer to AP or A-Level or college-level textbook where it's wall full of text with story to tell about the history of discoveries behind it and takes us through step by step how first law is derived, experimenting with some thought experiment like gradually increasing piston load that lead to formulas, and real life analogy like explosion of fire crackers. But the point is that you can't understand anything when you look at the lecture slides can you? Neither can us. While some of us try to understand by throwing it into CHATGPT, most ends up just blindly memorise that formula and use it in exams. And you don't even learn everything equally you would be skipping some necessary topic and boom suddenly it will be some very advanced topic not learnt even in STPM. ITS GONNA BE HARD TO SEE THE FULL PICTURE and thats why my understanding is always incomplete. And it creates a slippery slope that you end up just memorising more because you don't understand and come up with some very convenient but incorrect explanation to link the gap in your understanding. I think that's why ASPI makes me hate science until I'm liberated by the holy STPM books and olympiads to love science again.
YOU CAN SEE WHY THAT SUCKS THE FUN OUT OF LEARNING. That's the difference between ASPI and other syllabus like STPM and A-Level. In STPM you are expected to truly understand the derivation behind every formulas. In IB too you have to know how to use the formula in very different situations. IN ASPI THE SAME PATTERN FROM THE ASSIGNMENTS WILL APPEAR IN EXAM. IT MAKES YOU A MACHINE MEMORISING ALL THESE USELESS THINGS AND IS THE EMBODIMENT OF WHAT IS WRONG WITH OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM. Not to mention subjects like statistics that don't even bother telling you "why". Just say, hey, if you see the exam question with this pattern, use this formula and follow these five steps. No offense but that's the reason I haven't seen much people from ASPI being successful at Olympiads as opposed to A-Level/STPM/IB/UEC.
- "I might not love learning but I don't care I wanna just enjoy my pre-university life"
If you are thinking that you want to relax during ASPI, THERE IS NO SUCH THING HERE. THE CULTURE IS GRINDING GRINDING AND ALL MY CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS ARE "Hows the assignemnt" "The quiz just now was hard innit". Trust me, there are many try-hards here it's normal . And the friends that you play video games with? When you're sleeping they're secretly doing assignments. Back in high school it's so much fun because all of us have different personalities and did a lot of dumb things together in classes and ACTUALLY HAVE A FUN FRUITFUL DISCUSSION ON TOPICS LIKE ERM HISTORY OR COMPLEX CHEM TOPIC IN CLASS. They're creative and ask weird questions to push you to think more critically. Outside classes pun they're a fun bunch to hang around and joke around. No offense but ASPI really creates an atmosphere of studying and study with the sole purpose of getting good marks. I think la if you go to other pre u there will be more intellectual exploration like some syllabus has coursework that push your understanding beyond what you've learnt in classes. Or clubs (which are non existant here) or some actually fun Hackathon or volunteering experience, unlike events here which are like "Aim for Medical School" talk etc. And as you know learning isn't even enjoyable here. Also THERES STUPID "JATI DIRI" AND "KEPIMPINAN" AND "CRITICAL ANALYSIS" subjects that have mandatory events during weekends and in theory while they're supposed to teach you to be more holistic in reality... they are just becoming what teachers want you to be. "Critical Analysis" more like "if your argument doesnt follow the pattern Premise 1: Premise 2: Conclusion it isnt one" (PS: it depends on your lecturer) ITS SO TIRING HAVING TO GO TO SEMINARS ABOUT THESE SUBJECTS DURING OUR ONLY FREE TIME. And as PERMATA students would know, Jati Diri is, well, something that you have no control over that will ruin your pointers. And it's even worse here because there is no transparency as to how the grade is given. I knew students who did everything right and still got an A- with no explanation.
OH DID I MENTION ABOUT THE TOXIC EXTRACURRICULARS CULTURE AS WELL? You wanna join competitions for fun??? We don't do that here. We join for marks. If there's no cert we don't join. If given a choice to join some fun volunteering event or a mundane talk we would choose the later. Olympiads? Join for the marks and never attempt it anyway because we already got the cert. (again as mentioned in disclaimer there is exceptions to this: I knew friends who joined debate MUN etc for fun) And if you think KMB has non-existant math-culture, ASpi has non-existant culture of nearly everything ("nak study pun takde masa, mana ada masa buat ___"), be it math, programming, robotics, sports competition (there is inter-Asasi and inter-UKM comps but that's all), arts, language, quiz bowl, newspaper, etc etc. Aspians' extra-curriculars are basically mandatory talks organised by school (that most don't care about), visits to UKM hospital, events organised by student council such as Sports Day or Leadership camp, etc (again no offense, in fact student council did an amazing job organising all of these on top of all of the troubles they have to face). And I don't even want to talk about the ASpi confession channel, it's just constant stream of negative dramas complaining about many non-issue such as personal attacks over positions selection for koko marks.
- "Hey I'm not sure what uni I wanna go maybe UM maybe UKM maybe UPM?"
GO MATRIKS. It's 10000 times easier to get straight As there and be more competitive when applying to these universities. Meanwhile in ASPI, you work super hard and miss a subject and gets 3.9 and now you are slightly disadvantaged. And we know that when applying to "hot courses" like UM Computer Science, if you don't have 100% merit you are most likely not getting accepted. Sry matrikulasi students doesnt meant to offend you but among aspians we kinda look down on matriks students because they can score 4.00 while "goyang kaki" and still got into better uni then us.
On a second thought, here are some of the benefits of ASPI > matriks (provided by my friend)
- better living environments than matriks
- aspi has a better syllabus than matriks & better competitiveness than stpm, so as a middle choice it isn't all bad
- "Dah habis PERMATA and nak apply overseas. So might as well masuk ASPI anyway while waiting."
NOOOOO. YOU DO NOT COME TO ASPI IF YOU WANNA STUDY OVERSEAS. No international schools will accept a random Foundation certificate from a random university. Although I know someone who got accepted into UK universities with it (I did too), top UK universities (oxbridge ucl) won't even bother looking at your application. For US, technically you can apply since it's holistic-based admission, but let's be honest, I've never seen anyone getting into Ivy Leagues or T20 with anything other than A-Level or IB. And other countries that are more exam score based like China or Singapore... yeah look at their "Qualifications for Malaysia" section and I can 100% guarantee you it's gonna be STPM only and very rarely Matrikulasi. STPM IS SOOO GOOD AND UNDERRATED FOR OVERSEAS (EXCEPT US maybe) AND A 4 FLAT IN SCIENCE STREAM IS MORE OR LESS A GUARANTEED TICKET TO ASEAN SCHOLARSHIP AT NUS/NTU.
CONCLUSION: DONT COME ASPI PLSSSSS (from a very biased perspective). Jkjk I'm sure you will have many people telling you their personal very positive opinions and I'm sure they're right so this opinion is meant to provide an alternative view. Read through other opinions (from this blog or from elsewhere) and decide which pathway is best suited for you based on your goal.
As a closure, despite all the criticisms I had, many have positive experience during their time at ASpi. ASpi just don't fit well with me (who loves physics/programming etc and prioritize interest over career) but it absolutely is be a good experience for many of my friends, such as those who love biology. It is also the only pathway to many who are not as lucky as me to have many different opportunites, and it is, in fact, a decent pre-university programme that has produced many graduates that went on to study in UKM and are satisfied with where they are in life right now. Again, it's not about the school, but rather about how you make use of the resources there. That being said, as someone who loves learning for the sake of learning, who loves having fun joining intellectual/volunteering/real extra-curricular activities, and aspire to study overseas one day, I recommend against studying in ASPI.