Many foreigners interested to apply for SG PR are curious if having studied in a local university or tertiary education institute in SG increases the chances of successful status approval. While there is no hard and fast rule that having done so translate directly to your chances being higher, and vice versa, it does indicate some other things which can be of benefit to your application.
For instance if as an international student, if you have studied in a local university in Singapore, it likely demonstrates that it is more possible that you were putting in effort to integrate with the locals. It is not because of prestige or academic score reasons at all. If you studied within an international school or private institution in the country, then that will be a different story as it may seem to the ICA authorities that you seem to prefer sticking to your current citizenship status. Therefore, it is usually of no use to indicate this in your application if you did not study in a local school, because it is non-beneficial in helping you improve the probability of success.
However, it also depends on what you do within the school. It is not just about studying at a local educational institution. For instance, if you take lots of leadership roles and co-curricular activities within the college, and demonstrate that you do try to assimilate with the locals more than just study in the school, these will definitely help you in getting your chances of approval higher, especially if you put all of these into your cover letter during your application process too.
Additionally, if you had a government scholarship by the local government to study in a local university, then your chances of application success would usually be significantly increased. This is because these scholarships are rarely given out, and only to the best students academically speaking. Also, these government based scholarships usually have bonds, which means that you will need to be working for a local statutory board most of the time after graduation. This also helps you in getting a local permanent residency application approved due to the fact that you will definitely be working full time at a relatively high paying job right after university graduation. All of these work in your favour.
As you can tell, demonstrating that you are willing and interested in working hard to assimilate into the country, its culture and with its people definitely helps you out, as we also explained in another post how such assimilation efforts can be the difference in approval status versus your friends, and why two supposedly similar people can have different status results.