South Australian Matriculation (SAM)

[seeweijie]

Originally Posted by lindley

hmm.
you have to check the Taylors website to see what combinations they offer.
they'll tell you the combinations are for what kind of courses.

like if you take math/esl/accs/econs/spec maths = acturial science. if im not mistaken lol

Ya, I have checked it out earlier... there are other combinations which IT / Law replace the Spec Maths...

I am future accounting student, wondering which 1 should i take.. coz all 3 seems interesting...

[lindley]

lol. well let me just tell you lar
spec maths is hard. lol. most of the students are failing/barely passing spec maths. those in the jan intake lah lol.

not too sure abt IT and legal though

[seeweijie]

Then you are not encouraging me to take it?
My fren (last time classmate) now studying A level in Taylor..
He say A level's Further Maths is more o less the same difficulty with SAM's Spec Maths.. He say it is easy but wasting his time tough, so he has dropped it... but regret now... haha...

Is spec Maths really hard?

[youngyew]

It's hard if have no good grasp in maths. Depending on how well you are doing though. If you are aversive to, say, questions like these:

http://www.recom.org/forum/showthread.php?t=6450

then you should think twice about taking specialist maths. If you are quite inclined to maths and are able to tackle problems as such, then you will be fine.

[WilsonCWJ]

Spec maths is cool... best of all...no projects!!! Jz score well and dats all! Hahaha...

[holydiviner]

Do they have intake at around this time? i plan to take SAM too and found out that the intakes are only on January and March.

[nadia.g]

there is a july intake but its for scholar (mara/jpa) the july intake is stretched to 1.5 years

[Chuhwai]

Hi everyone, I just happened to pass by this forum surfing for posts to read, so decided to leave you guys a message.

I am SAM graduate from Taylor's College in year 2006, and currently studying Architecture in the National University of Singapore. I took Specialist Mathematics and Physics, so I guess I can answer some of your questions here.

Difficulty wise, I suppose SAM is relatively easier than STPM, but not much different from A-level because given the duration of study, SAM syllabus has lesser time to cover, and everything for SAM is just rush, hectic and intensive. For syllabus wise, I don't think much of SAM syllabus covers SPM syllabus, while A level they learn much about SPM syllabus in AS level. For SAM, it is more like directly going into the extension of SPM, and for Chemistry, Physics and Specialist Mathematics especially, much of it is of totall new syllabus I never learned in SPM before. For SAM, you will learn to cope better with deadlines and assignments than STPM/A level students, seriously, you will also learn about oral presentation which is essential in some courses in universities. One more thing, ESL is good, because it really taught me how to write essay, and it is really helpful in writing university level essays because the format is almost the same =)

For specialist mathematics, I would say it is quite difficult, and if to compare with A levels Further Maths, I guess it is still easier (not much though). It requires you to think, and it is more like " if you can do, then you can do; if you cannot do, then you really cannot do", meaning that if you can do, you can score high, if you cannot do, then you might get 0. So the variation in a class is quite large with some genius getting 90 plus, and some getting 6, 8, 15 etc. It happened in my class last time.

For TER, don't worry about it, because you can't predict, it is based on your cohort overall performance, and varies from year to year. Getting TER of 95 and above gets you admission into some good courses like medicine etc, but getting TER of 99 and above guarantees you quite many things. I am not too sure about that, but from what I know, this is what I can tell you - my friend got TER 95 got IMU medicine, and my friend got TER 99.6 got NUS medicine.

The bad things about SAM is that you really have to rush, not only study hard, for the syllabus if you want to do well, and you don't get to learn more things as you will do in STPM. AND, other people will think that SAM is very very easy and it is like:" oh, you took SAM ah, I heard that it is very easy and you all don't learn much" and " oh SAM... i thought you cannot get into NUS with SAM" as if SAM is really really easy. Ignore them =) they don't know how Australian students get into top universities in the world with Australian year 12, and how many SAM students got into top universities each year =)

Good luck everyone!

[gkahchan]

Originally Posted by holydiviner

Do they have intake at around this time? i plan to take SAM too and found out that the intakes are only on January and March.

they say that the july intake is for scholars, but i have read on a few blogs that sometimes there are self sponsored students who join the july intake. i'm not sure how this is accomplished, though.

[nurwany]

Originally Posted by Chuhwai

I am SAM graduate from Taylor's College in year 2006

Thanks for that explaination.

Do they have co-curricular activities there? I mean, does taking SAM means study around the clock?