THE ANNOUNCEMENT that a third medical school would be started at NTU came as welcome news to me.

It's not because I'm an aspiring doctor, but rather because seeing the experiences of many of my peers has caused me to feel personally about the issue of gaining entry to medical school.

A lot of focus so far has been given to the need to train more doctors over the next few years - and rightly so, given the importance of ensuring Singapore's future healthcare needs are met.

Aside from all this talk about demand and supply, however, the opening of another route to pursuing a degree in medicine will have a great impact on the higher education plans of many bright students and applicants too.

Back when I was in junior college, at least half the people in my class, where everyone did science A-level subjects, wanted to do medicine in university.

Most of them showed real passion, often volunteering at hospitals and doing holiday internships to get a better feel of what the profession entailed - and also to bulk up their CV for when application season came round.

Unfortunately, competition for entry to the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore (NUS), currently the only undergraduate medical school in Singapore, has always been extremely keen because of limited spaces and resources.

In 2007, for instance, only 250 applicants out of 1,950 hopefuls, almost all of whom would be very capable and have achieved straight As in their examinations, managed to get in.

Among the unsuccessful were some of my friends and classmates, who were understandably disappointed.

Indeed, many others students like them go through the same experience each year, with worried parents often writing in to the Forum pages to express their concern over their children's university admissions.

It doesn't help, either, that school fees for overseas medical courses are often prohibitively expensive even if one qualifies.

There are, of course, scholarships available from agencies such as the Public Service Commission or A*STAR but these are really few and far between.

Many people I know had to give up their dreams of saving lives, treating patients, or even developing that elusive cure for cancer, because they simply couldn't afford it.

Instead, they chose to study other disciplines like law, accountancy and engineering.

The reality is that there are so many more applicants than places for medicine that they knew a Plan B was necessary, even if it wasn't exactly what they'd hoped for.

With the new NTU school comes an additional 100 to 150 places every year.

Hopefully there'll now be less angst about medicine applications among both parents and students, and more people getting the chance to become the doctors they've always wanted to be.