Course: SUSS Finance with a Minor in Communication
My course is a crash course into all things about finance. We don’t have a year where we do generic modules like in other universities. In SUSS, we are taught all or the majority of the finance modules from Year 1 onwards. Throughout the 4 years, you’ll learn a lot of things in finance.
I came from the Poly route. I did Business Administration in Singapore Polytechnic where I specialised in international business and logical supply chain. During my 3 years in poly, I realised that most of the modules I was good at were analytical and language subjects. Most of the analytical subjects were finance courses. I thought I would be quite bored if I did a normal business course because I’ve already done it in poly where I specialised in international business and supply chain management. Thus, I decided to choose something that was a bit more challenging and chose finance. I wanted to do something different in university. I found a course that I knew I might mess up but I was interested in pursuing–a strategy that is very much different from the conventional ways of doing things.
Business is the umbrella term for everything you see in the world. Finance is just a subset of it. Finance is different from accounting. Finance is the projection of monetary affairs. Meanwhile, Accounting is about looking at historical annals. Business is like a house whereas finance is just a portion of the house to make sure everything else is working fine.
I wanted to delve into the sub-set. I did the umbrella on a generic basis in poly and I had an understanding of it already so I wanted to zoom into something more specific in university.
I knew languages were my forte. I thought that if I was taking finance to cater to my analytical side, I’ll also do something to cater to my skill for languages. I wanted to have both aspects fulfilled to have a holistic education.
My cut-off was just exactly on the point for SMU Infocomms. I didn’t think that appealing or all those things would help me get a foot into the school. When I joined SUSS, it had been autonomous for 2 years so I registered for it. I wasn’t very sure if I wanted SMU Infocomm in the place so I decided to come to SUSS.
Back then, they didn’t even tell the students from JC or poly what the cut-off score is like or any grade point indication. I’m not sure if they have it now. You simply have to apply through a portal and if you are selected, they will ask you to give a writing test, cognitive (numerics) assessment test, an individual interview and a group interview. You do it all in one-go which takes place in a 4 hour + session. This was pre-covid but I think post-covid, they do it online.
a. Writing Test
For the writing test, you have to write an essay of about 500-1000 words (I think. I’m not very sure.) For the writing test, they can really test you on anything in this world. Mine was about narcissistic personality disorder and we were meant to write down what we think about it, if it’s good or bad and how we can deal with it. For my other friends, they had other topics that I can’t remember off the bat. The writing topics differ for each person by a lot so I don’t really know what kind of topics SUSS chooses for their students. Don’t worry though it’s quite simple. You just have to go into the sessions and write and once the time is up, it will be submitted automatically on the computer. They actually give you the topic about two days or a few days before the interview and you can prepare beforehand by doing some research.
b. Cognitive Assessment Test
After writing, it was an immediate transition to the cognitive assessment test as the computer screen will change to show you the next test. The cognitive test is meant to assess if you are capable of doing good mental sums. You can’t use a calculator so you can only do manual calculations for addition, multiplication and division. There were about 50 questions to complete within a fixed amount of time. The ideal is obviously to get a higher score and to get more answers but I would say for myself, I tried to go for accurate answers. Quality over quantity.
c. Group Interview
Next, it was a quick transition to a group interview. My group interview topic was based on the writing topic. Since we did our essays on narcissistic personality disorder, we were interviewed on that as well. It was a bit like a group presentation. Depending on who wants to start first, they will just start talking about how they feel about the topic and the next person will indicate if they agree or disagree. It’s just about how you want to steer the conversation.
d. Individual Interview
For the individual interview, it’s a bit different. It was like a normal interview on why you want the course, what are some news that you read today that is related to finance, what you do on the side, blah blah and others. The usual questions.
*You may refer to this for more details: https://www.suss.edu.sg/full-time-undergraduate/how-to-apply
For the cognitive test, you should look back on how you can do division and multiplication without a calculator. Just visit it again and see if you can do it well! There are also a lot of patterns. It was a bit like an IQ test. There was problem-solving and logical thinking.
Writing-wise, I really did not prepare anything because I knew language was my forte so I was pretty calm. For someone who feels less skilled in writing, they might want to prepare since they give the topic a few days beforehand. You can memorise statistics or do whatever it takes to write. For the group interview, it’s just about seeing the dynamics and seeing how you can contribute to the group presentation. Take note of how you articulate your thoughts and make sure you don’t get overpowered by other people.
SUSS Finance is a direct-honours course that takes 4 years. All courses in SUSS are direct-honours.
Our school specialises more in breadth and somewhat in depth. When I compare my curriculum to students from other universities, some of our content goes surprisingly a lot more in-depth even though our timing is much shorter. In the Big 3 (SMU, NTU, NUS), they have an entire semester (of 12 weeks) to go through 6-7 modules. Meanwhile, in SUSS, our modules are split in segments of 6 weeks. Hypothetically, if you have 6 modules, you won’t do it all within 12 weeks. Instead, you’ll take 3 modules in 6 weeks and another 3 modules in 6 weeks. There are no overlaps between the modules in the first 6 weeks and the next 6 weeks. If you do a module in the first term (of 6 weeks), you won’t touch it again in Term 2.
I can’t remember off-hand exactly how many CUs we need to meet to graduate but everything will be planned out for you. The school will have this curriculum planned for all their students regardless of their degree that you can follow. However, should you not want to follow, you can change it yourself. Amongst all the courses that we have, Accountancy is the only degree that one cannot plan where one has to follow SUSS’s exact schedule of the number of modules per semester, how many you can take so on and so forth. There are just too many modules. Whereas in Finance, Marketing or Supply Chain, we have more wiggle room. We have more agency in terms of how we plan for our timetable. We can also have minors. Accountancy is by itself a very heavy degree so people don’t normally take minors.
But if you change your curriculum, you must do your own check if you’ve met the prerequisites to take another course. You must ensure that the courses you want to take in Year 3 are available to you because you’ve met all the prerequisites in Year 2. Same for Year 4. You can’t just decide which module to take. You must look at the prerequisites, your availability and whether you want to do it at this point of time. Not all modules are available in a semester. You also may not have sufficient CUs to take a module. We have a fixed number of modules we can take in a semester. If your GPA is good and you meet the cut to take more CUs, you can take up to 35 CUs of modules in 1 semester. One module is 5 CUs in SUSS while in the Big 3, 1 module is about 4 CUs. Thus, at best, we can take 7 modules per semester and at the very least, you can take 1 or 2 but I’ve never met anybody who takes 1 or 2 modules per semester.
We have a bidding system so you can plan your own timetable in the 4 years. We often start planning in Year 2 because you’re already a year in. In Year 2, I already planned for all the modules I wanted to take till Y4. I knew I wanted to do an internship and SUSS is huge on applied learning and emphasises internships. We often start doing internships from Y1 and our internship stints are always 6 months and above. In Big 3, they have a lot of class time. This is a bit different from SUSS. We have very little class time and have a more hands-off approach and have more wiggle room to plan and fit in other commitments we might have aka internship experiences. In Year 2, I have my summers and winters to do internships. I looked at how I can overload more of my modules. We have this non-academic graduating requirement called Work Attachment (WA) in Year 3. In Year 2, I took 4 because I wanted to overload as I didn’t want to take too many modules during WA. That’s an example of how I did my planning. I took 3 modules when I was working so I had a few more modules to overload in the next semester.
The bidding system is different from that of NUS. I know NUS has a coin system but we don’t have it.
There are two types of bidding. Firstly, for core modules. You will definitely take the core modules and you just need to choose which day you wish to go for and choose your timing. For the core modules, there is often enough quota for students to be calm about it.
Secondly, for unrestricted/elective modules where the competitiveness kicks in. That’s when you have to really really bid for it because there’s a lot of demand for all of these modules. If you don’t get it, it means you don’t get it and if you don’t get it, you’ll have to transfer the CU for the next semester and in the next semester, you may have other modules that you want to take. So in the next semester you may not have CUs to take it and you’ll have to postpone to another semester. It’s not bad but some people may want to clear it quickly. I wouldn’t say the bidding system is difficult though. It’s just about finding the sweet spot of when they want to do it and whether there is sufficient quota to get that module. The bidding is on a first-come-first-serve basis for unrestricted modules.
Our exams are 50% of our grade. If we don’t have exams, we also have an End-of-Course Assessment (ECA) that can replace our exams which is also 50% of our grade. Our other 50% comes from the Overall Continuous Assessment Score (OCAS).
OCAS is broken down into Group-Based Assignment (GBA), Class Participation, Tutor Mark Assignment (TMA), Pre-Course Quizzes and Class Tests. For Accountancy, class participation is 15% but for Finance, it’s 6%. It’s not as high as accountancy courses or other universities so it’s actually a pretty good thing. Our GBA is about 30% while TMA is 14%. GBA is a group assignment while a TMA is an individual assignment that you submit at the end of a deadline. An ECA means we know all the questions earlier on. An ECA is like a TMA but with a higher %. It is a take-home individual assignment we complete within a certain deadline unlike an exam where you have to go to school and do it on the spot. We also have pre-course quizzes that make up 6% of our grade. Before the course starts, you have to do all these quizzes to make sure you have a better understanding. You must get 60% for the quiz to even enroll in this module.
The quiz is not that difficult. It’s not like you have to study and prepare a lot. You just need to look at the reading materials and control find (Ctrl F) in order to find some key words. For math-related quizzes, we have to do our own mathematics. It’s not that difficult as you have unlimited attempts before the deadline. If you really want, you just need to find the correct answer, hit submit and then do it a 100 times to get 100 marks.
Most people have no difficulty passing the pre-trial quizzes. It’s just that people forget to do this quiz before the deadline and then they have to bid for another module.
There are zero MCQ exams. They are all math-related, open-ended questions. You just have to do it like a normal exam. Same for ECA. We rarely have MCQs. In my 4 years doing a Finance degree, I don’t remember doing an MCQ test or exam at all. There are also finance theory related papers that have more essay-type of questions related to finance. They are about 40% of the exams. Because this is a math-related course, there are definitely more math papers rather than theory papers. Pre-COVID, all our exams were done via pen and paper.
We need to clear our WA, Community Engagement (CE) and complete an e-portfolio. We have an E-portfolio where you have to attend some classes, courses, fulfil some prerequisites to obtain certificates and submit it on Portfolium which is the platform where they will grade us and then at the end of Year 4, once you complete all the tasks required, you will be able to graduate.
A fourth component is Overseas Experience (OE). All SUSS students have to go overseas and the good thing about it is that it’s all subsidised by SUSS. For incoming students, before you even start university, they will already send you overseas to Shanghai, mostly China or Indonesia where you will visit top companies or MNCs to have business excursions to companies that we are partners with. We will also have to do a project about it. It’s not that intimidating. Most of the students just go there to play.For my cohort and my senior’s cohorts, this was not a mandatory requirement and you could go for a local run but for our juniors, it is now compulsory to go overseas.So in a sense, the OE component has been fulfilled and you don’t have to worry about OE. You just need to worry about CE, E-Portfolio and WA.
Sometimes, you start your day at 8.30AM. You could start at 12PM depending on how you bid for your modules. I usually start my day at 8.30 and end around 3PM and I will do my GBAs in a cohort room in SUSS all the way till 6PM and then have dinner with my friends and then go back home. If you start at 12PM, most of the time, you’ll end at 6.30PM as you’ll have night classes. This (schedule I talked about) only applies when you have day classes which will mean you’re in Year 1 or Year 2. You’ll barely see Year 3 or Year 4 students around in school because they are usually all working. For myself, I’m doing my WA right now so I do my WA in the morning from 9-6 and then I have my night classes from 7-10PM and that excludes my assignments. So you have to do your assignments at night or during the weekends. So that’s the life for a SUSS student.
If you’re studious, you can do as much preparation as you would want but I’m a chill person so I’ll just go there and see how it goes. The Professors do ask us to read up on materials beforehand. We have an iSTUDY guide which is a run-down of all the materials and the modules. You have the textbook to refer to but we’ll just refer to the iSTUDY guide to have a good overview of what the unit is. That’s how you normally prepare or we’ll come in a blank slate.
Year 2 is very heavy if you overload. You can have 7 modules in 1 semester and there are 2 semesters in a year so you can have 14 modules in a year. If you have 4 modules in 6 weeks and you have GBA, TMA and exam, you will have at least 12 assignments to do in 6 weeks. That’s an overkill. It’s quite tough honestly speaking especially if you’re juggling other commitments such as an off-cycle internship or you’re working part-time.
About 90% of the students in SUSS are working on off-cycle internships or part-time jobs so you’ll rarely hear anybody idling their time away. For those students who don’t want to work, it’s also ok. It’s actually quite advisable not to work during Year 2 as it’s tough and there’s not much time. If you overload in Year 2, it’ll make your Y3 and Y4 much more enjoyable and you can do a lot more things.
Our lectures are also tutorials. Our lessons are 3 hours straight (with no break). Let’s say you start your day at 12PM. You have a 3-hour lesson for one class and then a 30-minute break before you start your next 3-hour lesson all the way till 6.30PM. If you start your day at 8.20, you could end at 3PM and you have more leeway to take more classes. Most people don’t take too many classes back-to-back because at the end of 3 hours, your brain is already fried. We also don’t have too many breaks. Most people take 2-3 classes depending on what time you start your day.
Our lectures are merged with tutorial classes which explains our duration. It’s not that you have a one hour lecture and then a 2 hour tutorial. It’s all merged together depending on how the professor wants to do it. Mostly, the professor will show the slides and complete the tutorial on the spot.
For Finance, we have about 15-20 students per class because it’s very small. For Accountancy, we have more and maybe a minimum of 20. For finance, there’s not as much class discussion. There is but it’s not as much. The Finance department has the smallest number of students. It’s a bit controversial but based on my knowledge, the Finance cohort is slightly more difficult to get inside. I don’t really know how SUSS does its allocation of the number of students for degree courses. From my own experience, finance is a little bit tougher to get in and difficult to score. Accountancy has a bit more room and has a larger quota for students to get into.
There are always good or bad professors. I definitely have a favourite professor. He is called Eng Joo. He’s absolutely amazing! If you’re a finance student and you have this professor, you’re in very very good hands. His way of explanation is superb and he takes the time to explain why a formula is a particular way or why something is a certain way. He understands very clearly the common misconceptions and queries students have and he will answer it all in one-shot during his lesson. His lessons take place in a story format. He will pose a question at the start such as “why is this this way” or he could show a chart and ask “why is there an upwards trend”. Then, he will answer it and “go back in time” and then at the end of the lesson, he will go back to the question he posed at the start.
He’s probably one of the rare professors you can meet in SUSS. The other finance professors take a hands-off approach and Google is really your best friend. You’ll ask your friends and have discussions on how you do certain things. For consultations, it depends on the professor. The professor may ask you to ask your friends and then come together if your friends don’t know. It also depends on how much time they have. If you meet the nastier ones, the professor may ask you to ask your friends and if they don’t know, go and Google. Or they may ask you to gather everyone and then everyone can have a supplementary class together to go through all the questions everyone has. But if not, you’re on your own.
When I got into SUSS, I was totally bummed because I didn’t actually know if I was making the right choice going to SUSS because back then, it was only 2-years-old. There was always a stigma. Over time, it has gotten a lot better because people now know that university isn’t just about the Big 3. There are people from other universities. The mindset is changing.
I went to SUSS pretty lost, honestly. But 4 years down the road, I feel it’s a bit of a flex in disguise. The culture in SUSS is very different from the Big 3. The Big 3 are about trying out overseas programmes, trying out this and that but in SUSS, there is little time. All of us are working. It’s quite easy to go on overseas trips since SUSS is big on applied learning, we can go overseas for our WA as well. It’s all SEA nations like Laos but you can go to China and banks overseas and there are a lot more opportunities. You can even go overseas for competitions. The school will subsidise it.
SUSS is small and thus nimble. And if you don’t like something, you can always write to one of the professors in the student office and tell him. Ask him for more support in this. I would do a shout-out to Patrick as he is our finance mentor for finance and accountancy students and he has a passion and loves students. He will push his students and ask them to do a lot of different things.
If you want to go to SUSS, there are a lot of thorns but there are a lot of pros at the same time. You will get a lot of opportunities you don’t get in the other Big 3s. The system and culture and the number of students there is different. The school is so big and established but every time, it can be quite slow in the Big 3 as there’s a lot of red tape. Students may or may not get the amount of support you get in SUSS. Meanwhile, in SUSS, students have close relationships with professors, juniors, seniors and the student office. If there’s anything you dislike, you can always start a petition. I’m not encouraging you to start one but if there’s something that you don’t like, you can be assured that they will try to change it.
Every single year, you can also always see how they are trying to upgrade the curriculum and make it more relevant. The curriculum changes every single year. My juniors in Year 3 and Year 2 or even Year 1…their curriculums are all different. Because they’ve made space for more machine learning, tighter programming, R programming, PSG Investment and those kinds of things. Because all of this is relevant. They are up and coming courses that employers are looking for. The school definitely places a lot of emphasis on the curriculum and also your wellbeing.
We definitely do have a wide range of things. I do Finance with a minor in communications so my doors open to a wide range of things. For WA, they changed the regulations. In the past, you had to strictly do a Finance job and go into a bank or whatever. But now they heard our concerns and will not be so strict about what WA you can do. You can propose to SUSS if you want to go into an engineering company but whatever you do has to be finance-related.
For WA, we have a lot of work-study programmes. If you’re an undergraduate and you’re here for 4 years, we have partnerships with Standard Chartered (SC)and quite a few companies. For Finance, I remember clearly that we have very strong partnerships with SC. A lot of their employees are from SUSS because we have this work-study programme. If you do well during this one-year programme, you can be converted into the permanent scheme and become a permanent staff at Standard Chartered Bank (SCB). This is quite an accelerated programme because you work for 4 days and study for 1 day. You do concrete things because the company does not give you mundane admin work since they’re in such close partnership. There are really good reviews about this programme, which is very much wanted. If you’re a finance student, I would highly recommend you to pursue this. For Marketing and Logistics courses, there are also work-study programmes. So we are in very very good hands as the school is very able and employers are able to take a bet on SUSS students because of the ways we emphasise applied learning.
You really don’t need to worry about your career prospects because Year 2, the school will market the hell out so you have a good reputation and good job. Unfortunately, a lot of my friends from the Big 3 didn’t have this sort of support from the school and they’ll prefer to have it. If you’re an incoming student, you can look forward to all this goodness.
SUSS has a portal to find jobs like the Big 3 but for myself, I self-sourced my jobs on my own. Self-sourcing suits me but I think the school’s portal is more than enough to find whatever jobs that you want. SUSS is always strategic about things. If you’re a valuable achiever and you go into a certain company, they will always try to make a partnership with the company so it is easier for our students to go there in the future. You don’t really hear of such things in the Big 3 because they’re more focussed on the curriculum and getting a good GPA. There’s definitely emphasis on getting a good GPA in SUSS but we focus a lot or maybe even more on your career in SUSS.
I actually secured a job at an investment bank. I don’t think I can reveal its name.
The culture of working in SUSS is very, very strong. 8 out of 10 students that you talk to will talk about their working experience and have at least 3-4 internships under your belt even in Year 3 because we start doing internships from Year 1. Even when we’re attending classes, we’re doing off-cycle internships. Granted, the student life is absolutely boring because we don’t have many CCAs or camps that you appreciate when you’re in poly or in bigger unis but we have a culture where if you don’t have any interest groups, you can just set up one on your own. Do your own proposals, gather your own students and do it yourself. It’s really a start-up culture in SUSS. We’re so small. We’re like a baby so the dynamics of this school is different from that in other bigger schools because everything’s been done in bigger schools. Meanwhile, for us, we’re always just trying to find our answers.
Because I’m in the second batch after SUSS became an AU, a lot of the interest groups that are currently in operation are done by my cohort. So in a sense, we are changing things and switching things up a bit and the juniors are enjoying the fruits of our labour. If they don’t like it, they can always take the initiative to do things by changing the group name or the structure.
*List of SUSS Interest Groups: https://www.suss.edu.sg/about-suss/college-of-lifelong-experiential-learning/cel/office-of-student-life/our-programmes/interest-groups-and-campus-projects
I was part of the Investment Group. I think my acquaintances are still the co-founders of that group but I’m not sure if they’ve changed the structure of the group. I’m not particularly involved in school. I’m more involved outside. I’m the person that I spoke about in the sense that I’m always working. The good thing is that because I’m always working, I can help to set up partnerships with my current employer and the school. I can hold talks, recruitment and whatever. Students can come to me and ask for advice.
Hi fellow firsts! If you’re coming in, you’ll be in for a very dynamic 4 years in SUSS. You’ll start to realise the school’s flaws. You might ask why the school is doing something in a particular way but you’ll start to realise the goodness in the school and how they take in your feedback to change your experience for the better. Come here with an open heart and mind. It’s not like other universities where everything has been set out for you. In SUSS, the way we do things is very different..
Appreciate what your seniors have done and enjoy the competitiveness in the school itself. Also, tailor and set your right expectations of the school. Don’t be too disheartened if things don’t go your way sometimes. Always remember to have fun and make the most out of your 4 years!
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the interviewees and do not reflect the official policy or position of any institution. They are also not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, class, individual or organisation.
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