Imagine you are a student of Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia. The university which is considered one of the top three in the country. If your dream was to pursue a career in oil company, aiming for the best company in the world like, name it, Exxon, BP, Chevron, Schlumberger, Total, etc, its not impossible for you, and almost quite easy (and common :P). They have their business branch here in the country. Now if your dream is to continue studying, have you ever thought of going to the best university in the world? Harvard, MIT, Cambridge, whoa! Now you are called a dreamer just because you dare to mention these universities. Oh, come on, studying abroad is already good enough. I was thinking hard wondering why is this not possible common.
I traced back to my experience studying in an Australian high school back on my high school days. I went to one of the top three high school in the city (what’s with all ‘top three’?). I have to say I feel that I am quite smart and I have quite good grades back then. I enjoy school very much. I could excel the tests and I was in the high-grade competition students. Really. So I feel that I am good enough to this “world class competition”. And this is not just me. Back in Yogyakarta I feel like I am just an average student, to be honest. So its all of us!
Just tonight I found a website offering a scholarship to University of Cambridge, called the Gates Cambridge Scholarship at University of Cambridge and I found their yearbook. When I see their pics, they remind me of my friends back in that Australian high school (but of course, none of them are my old high school friends :P). I was all, hey! How come they are more successful than I am? How come they go to better school than I do? Was I not in the same level like they were in high school? They are just human too, aren’t they? They can be in the world class university. Top three! So why can’t we? Are we afraid to dream that high? Then again, if you can dream working in top three oil company in the world, why can’t we dream of going to top three university in the world?
Then I found this post on a website http://agusrendiwijaya.wordpress.com/2008/03/20/sekolah-di-mit-atau-harvard-university-kita-pasti-bisa/. It said the person who got accepted had an average GPA back in his bachelor degree (I wonder how he defines average? Maybe his average is the high average, because its ITB, you know). Now again, I have thought that one of the reason it has not been very common for us is that we never thought of it in our life! Those people from Europe, Australia, USA, they are familiar with the university. So lets familiarize ourself! We are the one to open the path of our future, no one else would do that for us.
Dream big, high, from this right moment.
We live only once so live like you are going to live forever.
meanwhile don’t forget to pray like we are going to die tomorrow 🙂
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