It is generally understood that scholarships are given to the brightest and most outstanding students in a batch of applicants, regardless of their family background.

Bursaries, on the other hand, are awarded to those who are academically strong but come from financially weak families.

If the Howe Yoon Chong Endowment fund wants to help students from poor families who don't do as well as those who have no problems getting scholarships, I suggest that it calls these awards bursaries.

I'm sure the proponents of this fund are aware that as many as a thousand students score four As in each year's A-level exams. To get into one of the local universities, you may not need more than an A, a B and a C.

Such students will never even get to the interview stage for the scholarship if they were to compete with the straight-A students unless one of the criteria for application is that your A-level results must not be better than two As and two Bs.

However, having this kind of criteria goes against the grain of the meritocracy implicit in a scholarship award.

Lisa Ng (Mrs)