Entering Tertiary Education

Tertiary Education

 

After completing primary education and graduated from a secondary school or a high school, the third stage is to go for tertiary education. Tertiary education is sometimes called post-secondary. Students are preparing themselves to go to institutions of higher learning, namely colleges, universities or polytechnics.

 

Questions to Answer While Preparing Child to Tertiary Education

 

While developing our child's education plan, there are some important questions we need to be clarified.

  • How many years to go before our child entering the tertiary level? Making this clear is important as it will give us the idea of how much we should actually save from now. Without knowing this, we may end up saving less than necessary. For instance, the savings amount would be a great difference if a child is 10 years away from entering tertiary education compare to another child who is 18 years away.

  • What course do we want to prepare our child for? What is the expected cost? Different fields of study comes with different costs. Studying professional courses like medic, accountancy, law etc are usually far more expensive than pursuing courses like social sciences, business admin, languages etc.

  • Do we have more than one child whom we will be saving for? Some may have made mistakes for planning so well for the first child and leaving the second child with lower grade planning or even no planning at all due to financial constraint.

  • Does our child have any special academic, athletic or artistic skills which may later lead him to a scholarship? If the answer is yes, will it be a full or part? What about if no? Different situations will lead to different amount of money we need to prepare.

  • Are we preparing our child for local study or going overseas? This is another area which will greatly affect the funding if different options are chosen. The cost of studying overseas would normally be higher due to expenses like travelling and living expenses compare to studying in own homeland.

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