1 - What is the difference between DSA and Olympiad Math?

DSA and Competition Math require require students to possess similar skills.

Students who do well in competition math tend to have a significant advantage in DSA math tests.

This is not to say that students without Olympiad experience have no chance to do well in DSA math tests; we have such students coming to us, training and getting top offers from schools like NUS High School without prior competition math experiences and awards.

We train DSA and Competition math students together in our P6 competition math classes.

2 - My child is taking math Olympiad lessons with you. Does he have to additionally enroll in DSA lessons?

We train DSA and Competition math students together in our P6 competition math classes. Hence your child does not have to enroll for extra lessons.

3 - What are the criteria that schools base their math DSA decisions on?

Here are the general criteria that schools look at:

School Results
Competition Results
DSA Test Results

Schools have discretion on how much weightage they put on each criterion.

4 - How many DSA places are there for math?

There are at least 15 top IP schools that offer Math and Science DSA.

The total enrollment of these 15 schools is 6400, assuming that each school enrolls 400 secondary 1 students yearly, with NUS High School enrolling 800.

According to MOE, IP schools enroll 35% of their students through DSA. Let's assume a third of these places being reserved for math applicants.

NUS High School is the exception with 100% of their places being offered through DSA, and 50% of the places reserved for math applicants

Even at such levels, there are still about 2200 DSA places, with over 700 reserved for Math

5 - Does my child have a chance for Math DSA if he is not a platinum or gold winner?

There are a maximum of 200-300 Platinum and Gold winners each year across the 4 main competitions. Even if each of them was granted a confirmed offer, there will still be over 500 places left for students with no or lesser competition track records. This means that highly motivated and accomplished students stand a realistic chance for math DSA if they are provided with the right training and exposure. These students will be evaluated more based on how they do in the math DSA tests.

Just to prove our point, we have students without strong competition track records each year that are offered DSA places in the top schools such as NUS High School, ACS(I) and SST by virtue of their excellent performance in the math DSA tests.

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