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From 3 O-Level passes to 3rd at global IT challenge

Mr Joshua Sim won NYP’s STAR Gold Award last month. Photo: Don Wong

Mr Joshua Sim won NYP’s STAR Gold Award last month. Photo: Don Wong

SINGAPORE — His O-Level results were so dismal — “barely three passes” — that at 16, he decided to swap his books for army fatigues.

“I honestly did not know what I was doing or what I was going to do,” said Mr Joshua Sim. “I wasn’t really motivated to study and the subjects in school did not interest me.”

Fast forward to nearly a decade later. Mr Sim, now 25, is a second-year student at Nanyang Polytechnic (NYP) and holds a perfect 4.0 grade point average (GPA). Last year, he pitted his skills against 5,000 competitors — undergraduates and postgraduates — at the global Microsoft Imagine Cup IT challenge and emerged third.

For his achievements, he was awarded the NYP Student Talent & Achievement Recognition (STAR) Gold Award last month and was an A*STAR Science Award (Poly) recipient last year.

Perhaps he had matured during National Service (NS) or it was being away from home during his one-year posting to Taiwan, but by the end of NS, Mr Sim was pondering his future and finally decided to give school another try, he shared during an interview with TODAY.

“It wasn’t until I was about to finish army that I seriously started thinking about my future,” said Mr Sim, who is now interning at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR). “I was not content with where my future was headed.”

The journey was a long one. He enrolled at ITE College West, where he discovered a real passion for IT, and graduated with a Higher Nitec in Network Security Technology with a perfect GPA. “It shocked me that I was doing so well and it made me want to carry on,” said Mr Sim, adding that he had gained the “motivation” that he had lacked during O-Levels. “I really enjoyed all the modules, and because IT is ever changing, it is continually challenging … If it’s not challenging, it’s not interesting.”

At 22, on the recommendation of his lecturers and after deliberating between the various IT courses, he decided to apply for a Diploma in Information Security at NYP. There, he continued to excel, winning the Cisco Singapore NetRiders Competition in 2011 and 2012.

With the encouragement of one of his lecturers, Mr Sim decided to join the Microsoft Imagine Cup last year.

Competitors had to submit a business proposal using Microsoft technology, and the higher level of expertise required meant he had to read up outside of his coursework, seeking answers in books as thick as 600 pages as well as many online resources.

He was among the six selected to enter the final round and had to build a server from scratch in 24 hours.

“(When I found out that I had won) I was relieved that what I studied actually came to fruition, that I didn’t study the wrong thing ... I definitely felt like IT is for me,” he said.

“My parents are very happy and supportive of me,” he added. “When I did my O-Levels, it was very bad, so they didn’t expect me to do so well in IT. They are more surprised that I actually managed to have so much passion in IT and actually do very well.”

Mr Sim, who volunteers with NTUC Eldercare on Sundays, dreams of creating a mobile app — though he has not conceptualised it yet — and is particularly interested in cloud technology. He also hopes to one day work for Google. But for now, his priority is to complete his six-month internship and get into university.

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