my second published stories

35 youths awarded scholarships

2009/06/29

KOTA KINABALU: The interview was gruelling, challenging a chief inspector's son and other scholarship aspirants to think quickly and stand out during a group question-and-answer session.

Afif Shafie Abd Samad, 19, impressed the panel of interviewers, and will soon be heading to Leeds University in Britain to study geology on a scholarship from Shell.

"We were given pages of information, which we had to quickly analyse and later we had to speak in a group interview.

"It was tough and I am so happy that I won this scholarship.

"My parents would not have been able to afford sending me overseas," the eldest of four children said.

Afif's father heads the Tanjung Aru police station, near here, and his mother works as a nurse at a government hospital.

He was among 35 people from Sabah who were awarded scholarships by Shell to pursue tertiary education locally and overseas. In addition, 200 students received bursaries to help them through their secondary education.

Two other recipients, Kerry Hsu, 19, and Didi Ooi Sher Mey, 19, will head for University of Bristol in the UK to study chemistry and geology, respectively.

Although excited at the idea of studying overseas, they did not think that they did well in the interview and were surprised when they received the offer. The trio were met after Chief Minister Datuk Seri Musa Aman presented them with their scholarships at Universiti Malaysia Sabah, here on Friday.

copy from NST(new straits time)