SINGAPORE - Head over heels. That was the strategy that Miss Liyann Seet employed at the finals of the Miss Petite World 2013 international pageant held on Aug 3 in Connecticut, in the US.

And that was how our first Singaporean representative for it managed to score top honours - she was first runner-up in the competition and also won the Miss Asia Pacific Petite World 2013 title.

Miss Seet, 22, who stands at 1.58m, was the shortest among the 25 finalists.

Participants have to be below 1.67m to qualify for the pageant.

The Harvard University student, who is currently on holiday on her summer break, told The New Paper over the phone from Miami: "The girls at the pageant were gorgeous, many were just barely under the height limit, thus in their high heels, they were all so tall.

"So in a sense, it didn't resemble a petite pageant at all.

"I knew I couldn't beat them in terms of stature and I was also so unpolished on the catwalk so I decided to try to win the only way I knew how.

"I used my brains, and for that I have my father to thank because he did everything he could to make sure that I received the best education possible."

In Singapore, she attended Princess Elizabeth Primary School, Bukit Batok Secondary School, Pioneer Junior College and Singapore Management University, where she graduated with a bachelor's degree in business management.

Earlier this year, Miss Seet - the middle of three sisters - was accepted into the prestigious Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to do graduate coursework in finance.

When she found out that almost half the scoring weightage was based on the pageant's pre-finals closed-door interviews, she went for the jugular in the smarts department.

The judges had posed difficult questions to the girls.

It wasn't clear if some of the questions asked were a deliberate attempt to test the contestants' ability to think on their feet.

One question posed to her was: "What do you think of the sex trade in Singapore?"

Said Miss Seet, who is dyslexic: "I was really shocked when asked that because that suggested that Singapore was a developing country.

"So I answered and I told them that Singapore has the fourth best economy in the world in terms of its financial district.

"I also informed them that unlike some of our neighbouring countries who face issues of sex trafficking, the laws are really strict here.

"I told them we hang people for smuggling in drugs and we have also banned chewing gum."

The budding investor was featured last month in The Straits Times for having a five-figure stock portfolio.

Read the full story here.

Click on the thumbnails for more on Miss Seet, as well as petite celebs who are not short on star power.