CapitaLand Award for All-Round Excellence

The CapitaLand Award for All-Round Excellence gives commendation and recognition to a student who excels both in his studies and co-curricular activities. The Award, which is sponsored by CapitaLand Limited, is presented to the student who has outstanding academic results as well as outstanding participation and contribution in co-curricular activities.

In the final year of her Biomedical Informatics & Engineering (BIE) course, Ng Xi Yun started an 11-month student exchange programme half-way around the world. She was one of two students representing Singapore in Japan, in this programme by the American Field Service, a non-government organisation. Despite not knowing how to speak Japanese, Xi Yun deferred her studies at TP and attended Nagano Nishi High School where all lessons were taught in Japanese.

“Do what you like and make the best out of it” – that’s what this confident young lady believes in. The eldest of three children of a sales executive and a financial controller, Xi Yun, an O-level 8-pointer from Sengkang Secondary School decided on BIE as it brought together her three academic loves – biology, informatics and engineering. A quick learner with an insatiable hunger for learning, Xi Yun is graduating with a diploma with merit, having bagged 9 distinctions and a Cumulative Grade Point Average of 3.92.

Xi Yun is living proof that one can have both outstanding academic and CCA achievements. Her polytechnic years saw her obtaining an outstanding 1515 CCA points. Xi Yun recalls with a chuckle how she was once asked if she was pursuing “full-time CCA and part-time education” at TP! Having joined the TP swim team in her first year because she “just wanted to swim”, Xi Yun ended up representing the polytechnic at the Inter-Polytechnic-Varsity (IVP) swimming competitions, life-saving championships, and biathlons, both locally and overseas. She was captain of the SwimTemasek team in 2005 and the vice-captain of the Life-Saving team in 2007. In 2005, Xi Yun was awarded the CCA Merit Award for Sports, Merit Awards for Swimming and Life-Saving. In 2006, she was part of the Life-Saving team that won the Sports Team of the year award.

It was not only in the water that Xi Yun showed her prowess. Her leadership skills are outstanding as well. In 2007, she was elected as the National Youth Achievement Award vice-president. She also became vice-president of TP’s Global Connect Club and led a six-day student cultural exchange visit to Japan. At the Temasek Engineering School, she was a Student Ambassador and also a committee member of the BioEnGene Interest Group.
A fiercely independent, motivated and focused young lady, Xi Yun has been described as a “commitment freak” for always giving 100 percent effort and commitment to every task she undertakes.

Xi Yun has been accepted into the Electrical and Electronic Engineering degree course at the Nanyang Technological University as well as the Bio-Engineering course at the National University of Singapore. She plans to pursue the latter and eventually go on to do her PhD. Her long-term dream is to study medicine so that she can combine both engineering and medical expertise and run a rural medicine practice to help the less fortunate in third world countries.

“Just like technology never stops, I’ll never stop learning,” says this true all-rounder.