University Malaya was one of the oldest and most reputable higher institution of learning in Malaysia and it was indeed a prestige to enter the gate of this university many years ago. I would say, it is equivalent to getting yourselves into Yale, MIT or Harvard universities in America, National Taiwan University of Taiwan, and Qinghua or Beijing universities of China. It was only meant for the cream of the country and only top scorers of the nation went in. It was especially so for Medicine, Dentistry and Engineering faculties. During the late 70's even USM did not have the capability to offer such courses.
At our time, we only had UM, and USM as the two main intake universities for students based on the racial composition quota in Malaysia. Other universities such as UPM, UKM or UTM had limited places for non-Bumiputra (Bumiputra - Prince of the soil or the indigeneous people which made up of 65% of the Malaysian population). It was indeed a great honor to be counted as one of the Engineering students in those years. These elites would have to score a minimum of 2As, 2Bs and General Paper 6 in Cambridge A level or HSC examination in order to qualify for enrolment in the engineering faculty. For civil engineering, at that time it was the most sought after course which promised bright future and higher income upon graduation, with a lot of the students coming in with 4As. 4As was the normal criterion to enter into Medicine and Denstistry then. There were just a handful of students with such excellent results in major cities of Malaysia at that time.
The 1st year of Engineering faculty had a total students of about 400 of all the 4 streams (Civil, Electrical, Mechanical and Chemical). It was a very tough course and by the time we graduated, we are left with less than 200 students and a lot of the students failed and dropped out from the course over the years. Requirement was tough and very stringent, tough in the sense that the results were based on 1 final examination over all you had learnt over the 3 semesters of the entire year. One did not get any mark or scores over assignments or projects other than your thesis paper in final year. To fail 1 subject, you had to re-sit the paper and if fail again, the student had to be retained for another year. No student was allowed to continue the course if they ever fail the same academic year twice. In this way, we ended up with a very small group of graduated students; for example my Mechanical class has less than 30 of them and our relationship with each other was closely knitted because of this small in number.
Coming to study in reputable institution is a challenge and also an honor that could last us for a life time. It is the most shameful thing if someone criticizes your way and attitude of working when they associate you with the school or college that you graduated from. For all these years, I strive to live up to that standard and expectation of a UM Engineering graduate. Because of this honor, that comes with responsibility at the same time, I had shouldered that well throughout my working career and still feel proud and enjoy the great honor to call myself a UM graduate.
We hope University Malaya will continue to uphold the high academic standard and reputation of a top institution of higher learning in the country and improve its ranking in the region!
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