Edward Wong, a 20-year-old from Penang, had achieved a perfect cumulative grade point average of 4.0, top marks in all subjects, and scored 9.9 out of 10 for co-curricular activities in the national Malaysian Higher School Certificate (STPM), the country’s national pre-university examination, which is internationally recognised and widely regarded as more academically rigorous than other pathways into public universities.
Despite that, he was denied places in accounting programmes at six universities, including Universiti Malaya, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). He was instead offered a management course at USM, which he described in a social media post describing his situation as “neither my passion, nor my dream”.
The Malaysian Chinese Association (MCA), a party in the ruling coalition, raised Wong’s case publicly, prompting a response from the Higher Education Ministry. It said that despite his near-perfect record, Wong had ranked only 1,129th among applicants to a course with just 85 available places.
Two universities affiliated with the MCA – Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) and Tunku Abdul Rahman University of Management and Technology (TAR UMT) – have since offered Wong a full scholarship.
