This story is close to home, and we want you to know that upfront. Bernice is the co-founder of SuperMinds and wife of Iwan Yang. Her son Ricky secured a Confirmed Offer to the School of Science and Technology (SST) through the 2025 DSA exercise. This is a personal story, and Bernice is sharing it because she knows how many parents are navigating the same doubts and questions about DSA. We hope that by sharing this DSA experience honestly, it gives you a little more clarity and confidence as you figure out the path that is right for your child.
Let’s start at the beginning. When did DSA even come onto your radar?
It came onto our radar later than it probably should have. It was early 2025 and Ricky was already in P6. He was in the school badminton team, CCA captain, and everyone around us was saying to just go for badminton DSA. But I kept sitting with that and couldn’t get comfortable with it. I couldn’t picture him training four to five times a week, tied to that CCA all the way through secondary school. It didn’t feel like him. And it wasn’t just me, Ricky himself wasn’t sure it was what he wanted either. When your child can’t give you a clear yes, that tells you something.
Looking back, starting to seriously think about DSA at the beginning of P6 was workable but tight. If I could do it again, I would have started exploring the options at least a year earlier. The earlier you understand your child’s strengths and the school landscape, the better positioned you are to make a good decision.
So at some point I had to stop listening to what made sense on paper and ask myself a different question. What is actually right for Ricky?
But at that point, most parents would have just focused on PSLE. Why even bother with DSA?
I asked myself that too. And I get why parents go all in on PSLE. It’s what we all know. You study hard, score well, get into a decent school. It feels like the safer bet.
But what my husband and I kept coming back to was this. We didn’t want Ricky to end up somewhere just because his score got him there. We wanted a school that was genuinely right for who he is, not just one he was eligible for. PSLE results can open doors, but they can’t tell you which door is the right one. So we decided to go for it. To really try for the school we believed would fit him best, rather than just wait and see where he landed.
Even if he didn’t get a single offer, he would have walked away with something. Maybe a clearer sense of who he is. Maybe a little more humility. Maybe just the understanding that things don’t always go your way, and that you figure it out anyway. Those are life lessons that are beyond what any classroom can offer.
As a first-time parent navigating all this, what was the headspace like?
It was a lot to navigate. We came into this knowing very little about how DSA actually worked. Our approach to raising Ricky had always been to let him find his own motivation. In most of his primary school years, he had no tuition and parental supervision on his work was kept minimal. We wanted him to own his learning.
The consequence of that was his P5 results weren’t great. And what I didn’t know until we were already deep in the process was that P5 EOY results carry a lot of weight in DSA. Many schools use them as the very first filter. So that was a rude awakening. As a first-time DSA parent, I really didn’t see that coming.
But even with that, I didn’t want to just panic and abandon the whole thing. I wanted to figure out if there was still a real path for Ricky through DSA. And there was.
So how did you approach choosing the schools and domain?
My approach was strategic to what Ricky was as an individual and what he can offer back. It was about finding the best possible environment for him to grow, one that matched what he genuinely enjoyed and what he was naturally good at. Because if you enjoy what you are doing, it never feels like work. And that was what I wanted him to experience as he learns. Not what looked impressive, not what other kids were doing, but what lit him up.
Ricky was never the top-of-class, Olympiad kind of kid. But he was naturally curious and logical, always drawn to understanding how things work and how they could be made better. Coding, science, tech, these came from him, not from us. That same curiosity would later earn him the Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors Award.
I also looked hard at the numbers. Some domains at certain schools offer maybe six to eight spots. Unless your child is truly exceptional, the odds are brutal. But there are schools built entirely around DSA that have over 200 spots in their talent domains. That’s a very different situation. I factored all that in.
Were you ever pulled towards the more prestigious schools?
Of course. Certain school names just carry weight in Singapore. You hear them everywhere and it gets into your head whether you like it or not.
And there was another layer to it. Aiming for the most prestigious schools came with a quiet anxiety, would he fit in, would he be able to keep up with the culture and the rigour? As parents we want to believe our child can go anywhere. But there is a difference between believing in your child and being honest about whether they are truly the right fit for a particular environment. Prestige is one thing. Whether your child will thrive in that culture is another.
So the question I kept asking myself wasn’t which school sounds the best. It was which school would genuinely support who Ricky is and give him the space to grow into who he could become.
What made you seriously consider SST?
SST honestly wasn’t on my radar for most of the process. It doesn’t have the same brand name as some of the older, more established schools. But because Ricky was clearly drawn to tech and coding, we decided to drop by their open house.
What surprised me was how quiet he was. There were science and tech displays everywhere, exactly the kind of things he would normally dive straight into. But he barely interacted with any of them. We sat through the school talk, did the tour, and he said let’s go. I remember asking him afterwards why he hadn’t explored more. His answer has never changed. “I already knew I wanted to go to that school.”
That was enough for me. I stopped weighing prestige against fit and started trusting what I could see right in front of me. Few schools could offer him the kind of opportunities in science and technology that SST could. For a child whose passion had always been in that space, it felt like the natural home.
But you got pushback about SST, didn’t you?
Yes, quite a bit. SST is a relatively young school and perhaps because of that, it didn’t yet carry the same reputation for academic rigour as some of the more established ones. There was also the IDP programme, SST’s Integrated Diploma Programme is a through-train to Ngee Ann Polytechnic, where students bypass O-levels and progress into one of 21 STEM-related diploma courses. This gave some people the impression that the school was leaning towards a polytechnic pathway. That’s not a bad thing in itself, but it came with certain associations that made some parents and teachers hesitant to recommend it.
When I looked more closely, I found that SST is a G3 only school, so the academic expectations were real. The polytechnic association came more from their applied, hands-on learning approach. And the more I sat with that, the more it actually made sense for Ricky. He was always more of a tactile learner, someone who learns better by doing than by reading and memorising. On top of that, SST has a class size of only 25 students. More attention, more support, a more intimate environment for that kind of learning to happen. I trusted my gut that this would support him better than a more traditional school. And the more I found out, the more my confidence grew.
When selecting schools, how much did distance factor into your decision?
It definitely came up. More than once. But we made a conscious decision not to let it be the thing that ruled a school out. If a school is truly the right fit for your child, then the commute is part of what they commit to. You work for the things that matter. And honestly, we felt that a little discomfort was not a bad thing. Having to wake up earlier, travel further, manage your own time, these things build resilience and grit in ways that a comfortable routine never will. If we had let distance make the decision for us, we would have talked ourselves out of the right school for the wrong reason.
Ricky makes that journey every day now. And I think it’s good for him.
Walk us through what the actual SST selection process looked like.
It was multi-stage. First, a two-hour written test designed to assess how well students can solve real-world problems. It covered maths, science, and logic, pitched at P6 level for maths and science, but with many questions testing logical reasoning rather than textbook knowledge.
Only those who were shortlisted moved on to the next stage, the STEAM Challenge, which had three parts. A one-minute individual presentation on a STEAM project Ricky had done, a group project with other candidates he’d never met before, and a group interview.
For his individual presentation, Ricky presented ClipCatch, a modified nail clipper he had designed to neatly catch nail clippings as you clip. That same project would go on to win an award at the Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors Award (TKKYIA ) 2025. I think what it showed the panel was that he wasn’t just interested in science and tech, he was interested in using it to make things better. The panel asked how he’d improve it, whether it was a final product, who helped him, and how it qualified as a STEAM project. Questions that were beyond rehearsed answers. You just have to think on your feet and speak honestly.
The group interview was what I found most interesting to hear about afterwards. The questions were things like why do you want to be part of SST, how would you contribute, describe a day in your life before PSLE. Even what weakness has your teacher pointed out about you. These aren’t questions with a right answer, they’re designed to see if the child actually knows themselves. What the schools are looking for is self-awareness. A child who can be honest about where they fall short and show that they reflect and grow. That kind of answer is far more memorable than a polished one.
That’s also where the right preparation makes all the difference. Not scripting answers, but building the self-awareness and confidence to speak honestly in the moment. I saw what that did for Ricky. It wasn’t about sounding impressive. It was about helping him find his voice. And in that room, that was everything.
Ricky is naturally quite reserved. How did he actually hold up in that environment?
He surprised me. I was waiting outside and honestly I wasn’t sure what to expect. He’s a quiet kid. Not someone who usually puts his hand up first.
But what I found out afterwards was that he was the first to respond to every single question put to the group. Every one. He was enthusiastic. He came across as genuinely wanting to be there, not performing it, actually feeling it. And his answers were his own, in the moment. That was enough for me.
What do you think made that possible?
His father, Iwan. In the lead-up to the STEAM Challenge, Ricky was also preparing for his Tan Kah Kee Young Inventors Award interview. Both happened around the same period. A few weeks before, Iwan started working with him one-on-one, not just on confidence, but on structure. How to organise his thoughts and deliver clearly, even when the pressure is on.
SuperMinds was just starting up at the time. And watching Ricky through those weeks, I could see the change happening. He went from giving short, one-line answers to being someone who could actually hold a conversation under pressure. Not because he became a different kid, but because he stopped being afraid to take up space. At the TKKYIA award ceremony, we had a chance to speak with the judges who had interviewed him. They shared with us how well he had presented. That meant a lot to us.
And then the offer came. What was that moment like?
It was a big moment. SST receives about 1,000 applications from pupils across 170 primary schools each year, with a final intake of only 250 students. Just being selected was already something to be proud of.
But we didn’t let him just say yes straight away. We told him to take a few days and really think about it, because once you accept a DSA Confirmed Offer, you’re committed. There’s no changing your mind once PSLE results are out. This had to be his call, made properly.
He came back a few days later and said SST was where he wanted to be. That was good enough for us.
When PSLE results came out, how did you feel about the chosen path?
Ricky did well, a single digit overall score. He would have had options had he not taken the DSA route. But when the results came out, there was no second-guessing. No part of us was wondering whether we had made the wrong call. If anything, the results were the affirmation that the careful thinking we had put into this decision from the start had been worth it.
We had already walked through what a traditional school route would look like for Ricky. However well it might have worked out on paper, it never excited him the way SST did. And when he started school, something else put my mind completely at ease. Many of his classmates had actually scored better than him in PSLE. For a moment I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. But then I realised, that’s exactly the right place for him to be. Not the smartest in the room, but not out of his depth either. That middle ground is where real growth happens.
It is only now, seeing him thrive, that I fully appreciate what SST demands and offers. A place that trusts students to think, create and take ownership of their learning. Not everything is measured by a grade. And for a child like Ricky, that made all the difference.
Last question. What would you say to a parent who’s right at the beginning of this journey?
Be strategic about it. Know your child’s strengths and what genuinely drives them. But be equally honest about where their gaps are. Then look at the options out there and figure out where your child realistically stands. Not every child has a clear, stand-out talent that maps neatly to a DSA domain. If that signal isn’t there, it may make more sense to focus on results and let PSLE open the doors. DSA is not the right path for everyone. But for the child who has a genuine passion and the right fit for a specific school, it can open a door that grades simply cannot.
Looking back, I’m glad we went for it. Not because it was smooth or easy. But because of who Ricky is becoming. That’s what it was all for.
Ricky secured his place at the School of Science and Technology, Singapore through the 2025 DSA exercise. SuperMinds is founded and run by Bernice and her husband Iwan Yang. SuperMinds offers DSA Interview Preparation for Primary 5 and Primary 6 students, conducted by Iwan Yang, Principal Trainer of SuperMinds and Speak Sell Succeed. ICF Certified Coach with 2,000+ students coached and the most reviewed public speaking coache in Singapore.