Lee Kuan Yew was born in Singapore on September 16, 1923. He came from a middle class Chinese Hakka family which had been established in Singapore since his great grandfather migrated to the island in the mid-19th century. In 1931 he attended the Telok Kurau English School. Four years later, he moved to Raffles Institution, where he excelled in his studies and was always at the top of his class. Even at that early age, Lee demonstrated his potential and one of his teachers in Raffles Institution correctly predicted that he would "do well, unusually well" and attain "a high place in life." In 1939 Lee sat for the Senior Cambridge Examination and emerged as the top student for the whole of Malaya. The outbreak of World War II in Europe made him shelve his plans for further studies in England. He returned to Singapore and accepted a scholarship he had won to study economics, English literature, and mathematics at Raffles College, where he met his future wife, Kwa Geok Choo, and some of his future colleagues.