Rafel Zichry Onn

Many students here in Malaysia worry about their tertiary education, it has become a norm nowadays since prices for tertiary education has skyrocketed and many people couldn’t afford to pay for it. I was one of those people who worry more than they should have. The main reason why I was worried about this, was that my grades were not up to par with other excellent students even though I tried everything I can, it is still beyond my reach. This is where #MySunwayStory began.

I applied for the Sunway Sports Scholarships with hopes that I would be able to help out my parents financially, after all they’ve done for me. I didn’t get the grades that I wanted to for SPM, but my main concern was that I wanted to further my education independently without burdening my parents with the costs of my education. Deep down I knew that my grades weren’t good enough to apply for a regular scholarship. So, I turned to my sports background, I had been a part of Malaysia's national team for ice hockey. Fortunately, I was fortunate enough to be able to represent our beautiful country in the recent SEA Games in 2017, where our team secured the bronze medal, ever since then, I have represented my country in many different tournaments.

With the sports background I had, I applied for the scholarship that I was aiming for and I was lucky enough to be shortlisted for the interview. I was asked many questions during the interview but the questions that I can still remember is "Why do you want the scholarship?", I told them that I wanted to financially aid my parents in affording my higher education and I wanted to show others that even if you don’t do well during SPM or IGCSE, there are other ways of pursuing your higher education, in my case it was sports. Don’t give up even if you don’t get your desired results and keep pushing through the obstacles that surface in life. I’m grateful to Sunway College for supporting me to pursue my education and giving me a platform where I can achieve my goals.

Rafel Zichry Onn
A-Levels
Sunway Sports Scholarship