I'm an international student enrolling as a freshman in NUS this year on a scholarship. It's so stupid that they require us to sign an agreement with 2 sureties for my scholarship and another 2 for MOE tuition grant. Since the surety terms states that the sureties for TG and scholarship cannot overlap it effectively means I have to find a total of 4 sureties to enroll in university.

I am very grateful that I have many relatives that I can go to for help and they will probably agree to sign too. But the problem is I have 3 siblings and most of us are already in or going to be in university soon (eg. my older sister is going to study her masters on a scholarship too), so if my relatives already signed with me they cannot sign for my siblings. Needing 4 sureties for every person without overlap in my family is so chaotic.

And isn't scholarship supposed to support less well off students in their studies anyways? If a student comes from a less privileged family chances are they will find it very difficult to find 4 working adults to sign with them.