People have questions after seeing scholarship poster with student wearing Dior shoes worth $1,690 on it it

SINGAPORE: Singapore may be one of the most expensive places in which to live globally. However, some netizens noticed something off with a scholarship poster showing a young woman wearing shoes from a luxury designer brand.

A photo of the poster was shared on an Instagram account called @robinhoot.sg, which was credited to a Threads account called @gurlstrange. The image also showed a close-up of the student’s shoes, which appear to be a pair of Dior Vibe Sneakers. A quick check on Dior’s Singapore website says the shoes retail for $1,690.

The school in question is Hwa Chong International School, and the caption on the IG post reads that its students are “really diff(event) from neighborhood school… (where) ppl wear BATA, they wear Christian Dior…”

According to the poster, applications for scholarships to the school are now open. The poster looks legitimate, and the QR code links to the HCIS website.

Many commenters on @robinhoot.sg’s post poked fun at the poster, with one even writing, she said, “I got your mum’s rent on my shoes.”

On Threads, some wrote that the Dior shoes could be fakes that the student could have bought from Shopee, but others pooh-poohed this.

An alumna from HCIS confirmed that students wore branded shoes when she attended the school.

Another commenter joked that at HCIS, one must wear branded shoes before applying to get in.

“Looks like their marketing game is aimed at attracting wealthy people,” quipped a Threads user.

However, an IG user said, “Bro, it’s an international school. What are you expecting?”

Indeed, the school fees at Hwa Chong International School are nothing to sneeze at. According to this education website, the fees for Years 9 to 11 start at S$24,610. For Year 12, it’s SG$28,890; for Year 13, it’s SG$28,890. The site adds that half of the students are from Singapore, and the other half are “mostly (from) Asian countries.

Meanwhile, the school’s site says that it boasts a 1:10 teacher-to-student ratio and that there are over 900 students from the ages of 13 to 18. HCIS offers merit and talent scholarships for Singaporeans and Permanent Residents of Singapore and academic scholarships for students from Indonesia, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. /TISG

Read also: Hwa Chong student from Vietnam admitted to top universities in UK, US, Canada & Singapore