Alumni Digest / U of T / Ideas /
Joel Tan gets his biology chance
Rejected by universities in Singapore, Joel Tan applied once abroad and found the mentors who helped a late start become a research life.
Joel Tan with his parents after his June 2014 convocation at University College.Photo: Courtesy Joel Tan
The opening
Apply once when the door is real
Joel Tan loved biology but was steered away from it in Singapore’s school system. After military service and rejected university applications, he chose one overseas application to U of T, treating the top-ranked Canadian school as a long shot.
The decision was economical as well as ambitious: one fee, one chance, one possibility that his previous grades did not tell the whole story.
Potential can look late only when the system mistakes an early detour for a final answer.
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The bridge
Let a campus reveal the work
At U of T, Tan took his first biology class, joined laboratory work and found professors willing to involve him in research as an undergraduate. Mentors and peers helped him see a path from an Arts & Science degree to the Temerty Faculty of Medicine and a doctorate at Harvard.
The change was not a miracle conversion. It was access: to equipment, questions, time and people who could recognise effort before it looked like a finished record.
The return
Make opportunity a practice
Tan’s biomedical research and mentoring now sit alongside the story of how he entered the field. As a 2026 Schmidt Science Fellow, he plans to work at the intersection of computational biology and neurodegeneration, while hoping to return to Canada to build a lab.
His path gives alumni a durable test for opportunity: who gets a first chance, who gets a second conversation and what support makes it possible to pass the opening along.
Source reporting
U of T took a chance on Joel Tan – and changed his life
Original summary by Alumni Digest, based on public source reporting. This independent publication is not affiliated with or endorsed by the University of Toronto. Source image retained for editorial review; rights clearance is still required before any broader reuse.
