BCME. My favourite subjects were Bio and Economics because I liked the concepts taught and also liked writing essays.

I wrote down every single course there was at NUS, SMU and NTU and cancelled out those that I wasn’t that interested in. I considered doing industrial design and becoming a designer, but I felt that the industry was too competitive, with many people from AEP/SOTA, and I felt that I wasn’t up for that level of competition.

I also considered studying Life Sciences + Psychology as I liked science and was interested in Psychology as I was thinking of becoming a neuropsychologist in the future. However, I felt that there’s a low demand for neuropsychologists in Singapore, and it’s very competitive. If you want to go into clinical Psychology, you need to do further studies.

After considering the starting salary and graduation prospects, I was left with Business/International Relations/Politics.

To diversify my choices, I applied for different courses at different universities. I wanted to diversify my choices so that I will have more options to choose from if I regret choosing that particular course for all 3 schools. In the end, I was choosing between:

• NTU Public Policy + Global Affairs
• SMU PLE + Business (Double degree)
• NUS Business

I removed NTU from my options because I wanted to do something business related. I chose NUS because of Tembusu – it has residential life as compared to SMU. In addition, I didn’t choose SMU because I was afraid that I could not cope with the double degree. Fortunately, I got accepted into Tembusu, one of the residential colleges at NUS. Without Tembusu, I’m not sure what I would be doing in my free time.

Considering the program itself, I would choose SMU due to its strong career guidance office. I heard from friends that they really guide their undergraduates in their career choices (I’m not sure how true it is). I wouldn’t choose NBS (NTU) because it’s only 3 years, and I feel that 3 years is not sufficient to cover all the concepts clearly.

Interest. I feel that you will really suffer if you don’t like what you study. In fact, I wasn’t interested in business initially. After working at the Red Dot Museum after A levels, and participating in some of their discussions related to marketing strategies, I found it really interesting. I feel that it’s important to have interest in what you are studying because you are only studying that one subject at university, as compared to JC when you had other subjects, so it was less painful if you didn’t like a subject.

I felt that business administration was a more general degree, and I didn’t want to do accounting for the rest of my life. Eventually, I realised that the idea that you would have to be an accountant if you study Accounting is a misconception: some accounting graduates do not become accountants.

I feel that Business covers different areas more comprehensively (eg. marketing, accounting, HR, finance). In Econs, you learn about economic theories and use math to analyse the economy, and when I was choosing my major, I wasn’t sure if that was what I wanted to do.

In Year 1 and 2, we take core business modules that are compulsory for all students. The core modules will cover all the specialisations but they don’t go in depth. At the end of year 2, you choose your specialisation (eg. finance/marketing/HR). So in Year 3 and 4, you mainly do modules related to your specialisation.

Yes. In year 1, I had to take a mod called ES2002, which was about presentation skills, report writing and negotiation. The whole module is dedicated to grooming you to present well. I think it is quite useful. It’s something like PW, but way more useful and quite hard to score.

It really depends on the mod. Some mods have exams, while some are more assignment-based or presentation-based. There are mods that have online MCQs as their mode of examination as well! (due to Covid-19, the exams were online, but last semester, I had an exam that was written on paper). I don’t think the presentations are very difficult, but you really have to get used to public speaking.

My favourite module was Marketing. It’s really interesting. We learn certain marketing strategies and the 4Ps: product, price, place and promotion – and more about advertisements. The professor was very funny and I had very good group mates.

My least favourite module was Organisational Behaviour. It’s not hard. It’s just very common-sensical, and I feel like I didn’t learn anything.

But not many business modules feel very common-sensical; some of the other mods I have taken are Econs, Excel (business analytics), business law, and I’m taking coding next semester as well. So there are more structured mods as well.

In NUS, you have to satisfy some unrestricted electives (UEs). For those, you can choose to either take a second major, take a minor or take other modules from other faculties. There are also 5 compulsory general electives, but you can choose which to take. (eg. evolution; political correctness; media censorship).

I was deciding between business and FASS at one point and I decided that I didn’t want to go to FASS because it was too general and you have to take extra mods as part of the FASS curriculum. I am also very interested in Psychology. My thinking was that I wanted to major in a subject that helps with my career and another that aligns with my interest.

There are 2 main teaching styles:

Sectionals

They are 3 hour long classes with around 50 students. These are the kinds of classes where class participation is quite heavily graded (usually around 20% of your grade) and the modules usually place heavy emphasis on presentations and projects. Some modules with sectionals also have exams.

Lecture + Tutorial

There will be a 2 hour lecture and a 1 hour tutorial. These are the kinds of mods which are more examination based. It’s quite similar to JC, but you only have a 1 hour tutorial which is solely used to go through tutorial material. Some tutorials have presentations and group work as well.

In business, almost all mods will require you to work in a group, and most of them have presentations and report writing. If you prefer to work alone, business school might not be not right for you.

It is very heavy when it comes to submission period, around W10-W12. During normal periods, the workload is not that bad. JC A level period is more intense than university because the assignments/exams in university are quite spread out. Before the exams, you are given a week to study for it (recess week/reading week). Psych has an even lighter workload because it mainly consists of midterms and finals. I don’t have a lot of free time as I spend most of my time on Residential College (RC) activities.

I liked the interdisciplinary nature of it, as I feel that it is a middle ground between the Maths & Sciences and the Arts & Humanities. Business school has a heavy emphasis on group projects, and you don’t get to choose your group mates.

I don’t like it as much when I have bad group mates: if you have bad group mates, you are in trouble for that module. Some people might come into the mod wanting to S/U the mod (you can choose to not count the mod into your GPA, but there are some prerequisites to S/U a mod), meaning they will be less invested in the mod, so you might have to carry the project.

I like the content that I’m learning but I don’t like the fact that it’s very research based. You see a lot of numbers and symbols in Psych reports. I feel that these stats are necessary, but I didn’t expect to be learning so much about Stats in Psych.

Business

People think that business is all fluff, which is true for certain mods. However, I realised that a lot of things in business (e.g. general finance and accounting) involve Math as well.

Psychology

I thought it would be very fun, but to a certain extent it was very content heavy and research based. For intro to Psych, we were supposed to memorize a lot of content, but due to the pandemic, they made the exam an open book exam. We have to participate in research (compulsory) for our Year 3 or 4 seniors, along with the Psych Masters students/graduates. It’s fun because you get to see what the seniors are researching, but annoying when you have to take time outside of class to participate in so many experiments.

• You have to be unafraid to speak up
• Be comfortable with talking to a large group of people
• Work well in groups

Psych:

• Open to a lot of new ideas
• Be able to do research and prove findings

I would say that majoring in Business is worth your money! Although right now the career prospects doesn’t seem too good due to the Covid-19 situation, it was quite good before this. It depends on how you fare in Business school. If you do very well and grab all the opportunities, your career prospects would be quite good. The starting pay is $3000-4000 which is not bad.

While there are many people studying business, there are many careers that fall under business, such as HR, business analytics, economists and investment banking. There are many jobs out there for business graduates to fill!

I think we will know more stuff relating to business. As long as you have some understanding of the financial market, with other degrees, you might have an advantage because the finance sector likes diversity. Of course, if you don’t have an understanding of the financial market, it would be harder to prove yourself unless you have relevant work experience.

I live on campus in Tembusu College, which is under the UTown College Programme (UTCP). Modules-wise, NUS has 5 general electives you need to fulfil, but if you are in UTCP, you need to take 1 general elective. The other 4 general electives and 1 Unrestricted Elective (UE) are substituted by modules in UTCP (eg. perception of colour in global context/fakes in society).

There are also Tembusu forums where Prof Tommy Koh invites various guests to talk about issues in society (eg. Covid-19/Hong Kong protests/disability). There’s a lot going on, and it’s always interesting. I also learnt a lot through adopting an interdisciplinary perspective.

A good thing about RC is that I get to meet students from different faculties! I live in a single room even though there are suite options as it is cheaper. I’m part of the house committee, and I feel that RC life is very fun because of the various activities like Halloween and Christmas parties, food events like Prata Night, and various interest groups. House Committee workload is quite heavy because we put our best into planning each activity.

The main differences between CAPT/Tembusu/RC4 are:

• Location
• Modules
• Seminar
• Culture

For modules, there is the Ideas and Expository Module (IEM) and 2 writing modules that are common across the RCs.

For seminars, different RCs have different seminars, and I was the most interested in Tembusu’s modules!

As for the culture, I feel that Tembusu is more liberal and transparent, and unafraid to talk about taboo topics (eg. they have an interest group called T freedom, which advocates for gay rights). You are entitled to have your own opinion, and everyone is an activist in their own right!

You can transfer. It is very easy to change course early on, try to do it before the early half of Year 1 because you will not be able to transfer some mods to your new degree. Only take a gap year if you are going to do something (eg. job/ internship/ studies).

• Plan your time carefully
• Grab opportunities
• Be nice and take the time to connect with as many people as possible
• Don’t be a snake

You need to figure out what you want in life and your end goal. For me, I knew that I didn’t want to work in the corporate world for a long time and I need a good pay so that I can support myself and my family, and travel and volunteer in the future. I knew that I wanted to help people, and working backwards, I felt that I would be in no position to help others when I don’t have enough to support myself and my family. So, I thought business was a natural option due to how both my interests and my goals align with business, and I won’t end up making a living through means I hate. Interest is really very important. Some of my friends chose Computer Science due to its good career prospects but they realized they hated it later on and switched courses.