I am a regular now and have many friends who have gone through
different education routes in their SAF
career. Let me map out some of the routes you can take as a diploma
holder thinking of signing on.
Route 1: Sign on as a diploma holder as serve as a officer with
diploma as your highest qualification. You will be placed into
scheme A, which is the lowest paying officer scheme. I’m not sure
how long the bond is, you can check it out online or call mindef
recruitment.
Route 2: Sign on as a diploma holder and get into a recognized
local university, NUS, NTU or SMU, or any recognized overseas universities, Australia,
US, UK or Canada etc. As long as you get a place in any recognized
local or overseas universities, mindef will give you the Local
Study Award (LSA) which provides you with school fees. Mindef will
only give you the amount equivalent to local university rates, so
if you’re thinking of studying overseas, you’ll have to top up with
your own money. The LSA bond is 4 years.
Route 3: Sign on as a diploma holder. If you did well in poly,
you can try for the SAF Academic Scholarship
(SAS) Local or Overseas. SAF will then pay
for your university. If you get the SAS Local
and want to study overseas, you’ll have to top up like the
LSA. If you get the SAS
Overseas, then Mindef will pay your full school fees for an
overseas unviersity and give you monthly pay. The bond for
SAS is 6 years may it be local or
overseas.
Route 4: If you do extremely well in Poly, you can try to get
the SAF Merit Scholarship (SMS). This is more
difficult to get. if you want to know more about it you can
ask.
Hope this helps!
Oops i forgot to add. If you decide to sign on with your diploma
without going to get your degree, you’ll be placed into Scheme A.
If you have a degree from any recognized university both local or
overseas, you’ll be automatically be placed in Scheme B. If you get
the SAS Overseas, SMS
or SAFOS scholarships, you can go for an
interview to try to get into Scheme C. If you fail the interview,
you’ll be placed into Scheme B.
