IN YET another piece of evidence of Malaysia’s perpetual “brain drain” problem, Twitter user Firdaus Lee recently shared the results of his university applications in both Malaysia and the United Kingdom.
Firdaus revealed that despite achieving an impressive CGPA of 3.95, his application for local universities through University Central Unit (UPU) fell through completely.
“I don’t get it. What’s wrong with UPU. Not even one?” he wrote.
His tweet was accompanied by images of his results slip, a screenshot of the rejection from UPU and another screenshot from the UK-based Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS).
In the latter, the UCAS placement application yielded three offers from two universities; two for Mechanical Engineering, and one for Manufacturing Engineering.
His tweet was met with surprise and dismay by netizens, with some people claiming that they had experienced the same thing, or that someone they know went through the same situation.
Some even offered theories as to why this happened.
On Reddit, one user opined: “Its very easy to get offers from these overseas [universities] because you are their source of income and they charge foreign students like 3 to 4 times higher fees than locals”.