BY AMELIA TAN & JANE NG

HWA Chong Institution student Koh Mingming decided to live in the hostel during her final year of junior college to save time on travelling and prepare for the A levels.

Three times a week, she was up at 4.30am to write economics essays.

Mingming, who aced English, Chinese and French, bagged a scholarship from the Monetary Authority of Singapore and plans to study economics at Yale University.

She was one of six "perfect" scorers from Hwa Chong, River Valley High School (RVHS), Raffles Institution (RI), and Temasek Junior College (TJC). They all took the 13 credits allowed and received distinctions in all their nine subjects.

Mingming and Tan Zhi Xiang from RVHS led the pack of the "perfect" scorers, getting an A1 for Higher Chinese. The others, including TJC's Elis Lee, got an A2 for Higher Mother Tongue.

The top students, all 19 years old, managed to pull off the feat while juggling several co-curricular activities (CCAs) and pursuing other interests.

Mingming was in drama, the Chinese editorial club and the language elective programme's student council, while Zhi Xiang was a student councillor.

All of them said that it takes loads of discipline and good time management to be able to handle a full plate of CCAs and school work.

RI's Nigel Fong was the chairman of the debating society and volunteers in Meet-the-People Sessions held by MPs in Simei once a fortnight. Fellow RI schoolmate Kaushik Subramanian Venkataraman was in the entrepreneurial club and Indian cultural society while Barry Tng is a chemistry and maths Olympiad medallist and an accomplished pianist.

Barry, who is hoping to pursue maths and economics on a government scholarship in the United States or Britain, said he plans his schedule for the whole year.

"If I know that I have common tests at a certain time, I will start studying about two or three months before.

Their teachers also played a big role in their success, said the students.

Kaushik, who hopes to study engineering or economics in the US on a government scholarship, said: "A month before the A levels, my economics teacher told us that we could meet him as many times as we wanted for consultation sessions. This was very encouraging."

In the past month, there has been a public debate about the impact of a parent's academic qualifications on a child's success in school. When asked, some of the top scorers, whose parents are non-graduates, said they do not feel disadvantaged in any way.

Nigel, whose mother is an A-level holder and whose father holds a diploma, plans to study medicine and work as a health policymaker in future. He said: "My parents ingrained in me values such as the importance of working hard, and I think this was a reason I did well."

RI principal Lim Lai Cheng said children with graduate parents may not have the advantage. "I've seen graduate parents who do not care much about their children's future and, as a result, their children don't do well. It is not the parents' academic qualifications that matter but the values they pass on and whether the student wants to make full use of the opportunities in school."