On why you should not take up an A*STAR post-graduate "scholarship":


Me: "People who take A* scholarships post-bacc are... the biggest morons. There is no nice way to put it. MORONS"

A: whyyyyyyyyy

Me: You get a bond and you would probably have gotten post-grad funding in the first place

A: but what if the person doesn't get a post-grad funding in the first place

B: i'm sure there's a rationale for it. perhaps they couldn't get into some fully funded program or didn't want to live on a meager graduate assistantship for 7 years

C: It's a form of selflessness I guess

D: PhD is generally fully-funded in better universities. so you should aim to get to those fully-funded programmes. might have to live on meagre salary for 5-7 years, but if that's what you want, you should do it. (and dun even think of doing PhD in NUS!)

E: phds in the states are fully funded at any university worth getting a phd from. in fact, guidance counselors and faculty advise not to enter any phd programme that doesn't fully fund its phd candidates.

F: I second E. It is not difficult at all to get funding for a PhD in the US. For most programs ALL PhD students get funding upon admission. If you cannot even get into one of these programs, then you should not do a PhD.

Also, grad assistantships in the sciences aren't that meagre. I'm in the humanities, we get less money than the sciences, but some students in my program still save enough to buy a house while they are still in the program.

G: That said, its easier to get into top programs if someone else is footing the bill

H: 2 reasons:
1. priority to top positions given to scholars (as usual)
2. it's significantly easier to get into top programmes if you bring your own funding (as geoffrey pointed out)

F: The purpose of getting into top programmes is presumably for better career prospects later. Signing your soul to A* defeats that purpose. In the first place, if you're really outstanding in grad school, you can secure a good post-doc right off the bat (or, in some fields, even go straight to a tenure-track position). But no matter how outstanding ... See Moreyou are in grad school, there is no guarantee that you can find a similarly good post-doc position in A* (you cannot jump straight into a senior position, not even if you're a scholar). In the first place, there is the very real question of whether there exist good post-doc positions in A*. In the second place, your choice of post-doc has to be approved by scholarship administrators. In the third place, A* is only one organisation and obviously the available post-doc positions in your field within A* are going to be much fewer than the total number of post-doc positions available on the world market. Your options are very, very much reduced if you are on a scholarship.

If that is not your purpose, but you want to get into top programmes just because you like the feeling of being somewhere 'prestigious', well, good luck to A* having such people in their team.