By Tan Yu You (21S03H)
On the first day of Orientation last year, I remember one of the girls in my group sharing that one of her fears coming into RI was the divide between us and the students from the Raffles Programme (RP).
Perhaps it was an offhand remark and she did not mean for it to be taken seriously, but this fear resonated well within the small, mismatched group of five students from the Joint Admissions Exercise (JAE) anxiously waiting to meet the RP students for the first time.
A Google search immediately reveals that this fear is very common among hopefuls aiming to enrol into Raffles Institution after receiving their O-level results. Yet, stories shared by ex-Rafflesians on online forums and discussion threads seem to offer conflicting views on whether this so-called divide is something worth fretting over. Case in point, a previous article published in 2018 on Raffles Press claims that “the RP/JAE divide dissolves very quickly” while this post on Reddit claims the other extreme.
So, what might be the cause of this “RP/JAE divide”?
Continue reading “Let’s Talk: The RP/JAE Divide”