Course + Year:NTU BEng (Civil Engineering) Graduate
Scholarship:No
I went to JC, so I did PCME. Maybe it’s because I come from a traditional family, but my dad wanted me to do Engineering or something that was non-business related even though I was interested in business. So, he told me to take the Engineering route, then do business/MBA as a Masters in the future.
In his opinion, business skills could be found outside of the degree programme. After graduation, I realised that engineering skills are quite effective: while some business courses are hard to get into, engineering is also a pretty good topic to explore. So, if you’re interested and think you can get good scores in it, Engineering is not a bad option!
If you see the rank points required, Computer Science/Engineering is obviously one of the hardest courses to get into. After that, there’s Mechanical, Civil, and Triple E. These courses are not as hard to get into, and they’re actually pretty good in setting a solid foundation for your academics! Even engineering students get into the banking industry, finance, or consulting – even if you do Engineering, you can sometimes branch out into other industries a lot easier, than if you do a specialised degree for it.
Also, some people may think that an Arts degree might not be the most practical or obvious choice. If you manage your time wisely, you can consider a double degree, like Engineering with another arts course. If you feel that arts may not be practical, you can pursue it on the side!
That’s why I decided to start with Engineering—then I started to think about which engineering course to take. Mind you, business was still something I wanted to do, so in my head, I thought, “Okay, fine, let me pick an engineering course that will be an easy 4 year journey.”
My thought process was really simple and clear: after graduating from university with an engineering degree, I’m going to get into business after graduating. I considered factors like:
If you compare within Singapore, Mechanical Engineering and Civil Engineering are both not as hardcore compared to Triple E. Triple E is quite hardcore – it teaches you coding and electronics, and the field is highly saturated. So I just threw Triple E out of the way. In the end, I was deciding between Civil and Mechanical Engineering, and which would be easier for me. I realised that Mechanical has a bigger cohort compared to Civil. For Mechanical Engineering, it’s a huge cohort (around 600 people), and you will find people who are genuinely passionate. These people score really high and it’s harder to compete with passionate individuals. Civil engineering has about 150-200 people in either NUS and NTU, and the competition is not as intense, as compared to Mechanical Engineering. I feel like the stereotype for Civil Engineering is that the students who are not as academically strong or come from construction/structural consultant business families, may not be particularly passionate about it, they may just want to get the degree and ciao. So if you’re hardworking, you can make it.
Also, if you’re someone who cares a lot about job security, literally a lot of the people I know in Civil Engineering in NTU are on the BCA scholarship. It pays all your tuition fees, and has a GPA requirement that is actually quite easy to get (if you study) and your career path is secured after graduation. You might get a lower pay for the first few years, but because you’re on the scholar track, you’ll probably be on a faster track as compared to your peers. If you’re looking for job security, I would say that this is a solid track.
This is from my own professor. He said, “For the next 30 years, construction is still going to be a big thing in Singapore. It’s not going to stop.” Of course now with Covid, it can definitely be risky, but the trend is definitely not going to stop any time soon, it’s definitely going to be an industry that has high demand for talent, but not so many people want to get into it. If you’re the type of person who has some sort of interest in Engineering, provided you get good scores, you can probably make good money within the field.
Also, this is something quite weird and controversial. I think if you get an average score for A Levels, you probably have a seat secured at NUS or NTU or some other institution. I have a friend who did not do that well in JC. She’s someone who failed Physics, but she got into Civil Engineering. She had to go in for a small meeting before she got accepted, and that’s all that it required. I think if you’re a Singaporean, and plan to apply for these engineering courses with okay grades, you will probably be able to get in.
Civil Engineering requires knowledge of both Math and Physics (Chemistry not as much), but Physics is the most important. You’ll acquire the rest of the skills through the degree programme. These are the 2 major subjects that you need to know prior to taking a Civil Engineering degree.
In the 1st year, there’s a heavy focus on your fundamentals (like Math!).
In our 1st year, we’re mainly taught basic engineering skills: all students majoring in any of the Engineering disciplines have to learn the same set of skills. For example, you’ll learn Python in the first year, which is a really really good skill to have. You’ll meet your friends from Environmental Engineering, Triple E, Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace engineering, and others. You’ll have a lot of overlapping classes with them.
In the 2nd year, they’ll teach you the basics of structural stuff like steel design and the basics of what is happening in Singapore. The Civil Engineering that you learn is almost curated for you to become an engineer in Singapore. I’ll give you an example. Environmental Engineering in Singapore focuses more on water, sanitation/drainage systems, and hydraulics; it’s really helpful to prepare you for work in Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA). Whereas in America, Civil Engineering talks about all the different aspects. They talk about how to engineer your own solar powered system and teach you about all the different forms of energy. So that’s a flaw in the Environmental Engineering education, and like most courses in Singapore, a Civil Engineering education is tailored towards the Singapore’s context.
In Civil Engineering in Singapore, within the 2nd and 3rd year, you’re taught the fundamentals relevant for Singapore. Structural and GeoTech are the 2 prominent ones – there are a couple of other things like design – but these 2 make up the crux of the Civil Engineering experience in Singapore. There are also other niche fields like transportation/traffic engineering.
Structural literally starts with the way we build the building. That is where your knowledge of physics comes in handy: if I put force on one end of the structure, what is the force on the other end, and what is the force in between? And how will the structure bend? What are the safety factors considered?
Geotech and foundation engineering is more of what is underneath the building. We have different types of soils beneath the ground. Let’s say you have soft clay; you need to pile deeper to have a stronger foundation. We learn how much we need to pile and how much we need to support a structure. Since Singapore is expanding our roads, we have a lot of underground structures – geotech is something that’s going to remain relevant for a long time; this is a country that will always need Civil Engineers to exist.
In the 4th year, you get involved in teamwork and specialise. Along the way you have modules that are not exactly engineering related. You learn things like Engineering Communication, in which you have to do a presentation and get a score, and you’ll learn about the history of engineering, how important safety is as a Civil Engineer, and you’ll read about accidents that happened around the world due to carelessness.
Anyway, your 4th year is a bit more interesting! You have two projects, one is this thing called a Final Year Project, and you also have a Integrated Design Project (IDP).
The Final Year Project is something you select before the year starts. You can pick whatever interests you. For me, I was looking into something more technical so I picked a topic that required me to code. Quite frankly, I had so much fun doing it! I realised that your passion changes along the way, so this final year allowed me to explore something that was not mainstream Civil Engineering related. If you’re the type of person who doesn’t really know what you’re doing throughout the course, you will probably be able to find something you genuinely enjoy at least in the final year. Even if what you like is super niche, you can find a professor who’s interested in the same thing as you and take up their topic, or you can create your own topic and pitch it to a professor! Something I heard from my senior is that for coding, if you need to code something and it works, within Civil Engineering, you’re probably going to get at least an A-. (But this is only what I’ve heard.)
Along with your final year project, another project you’ll have is the Integrated Design Project. This is really exciting because you’re going to be doing it in a group; ours was about building a building. If you want to score well, I advise that you have to choose your members carefully, and be as blunt as possible when you’re trying to scout. I was scouted one year before and the concept was clear, the ones that want to score well, they’ll pick the ones that want to score well. The first question I was asked was: what grade are you expecting for IDP?
The structure of this IDP is quite fun. There are different teams; you have the architect team; there is a foundation team handling all the geotech stuff; there’s the structural team (handling the beam, column, stuff like that); there’s also the reinforced concrete team. These are the different teams you have to come up with. I ended up becoming the project manager since my skill set was more on the management side of things, so I had to handle the team. The architect team will come up with drawings, then the geotech team will look at the condition of the soil and find out how much piling we need to ensure that structure stays standing. For that, they would need to know the weight of the concrete on the building — so the RC team would need to go back to the architect and ask for the drawing… It gives you a simulation of how the real working world will be when you graduate!
Our quizzes have a lot to do with calculation and understanding the concept.
If you are ever in a situation where you don’t understand the content of the quiz (which actually happened), my advice is to write the sentence: “Assuming that,” then set up your own parameters like x equals to something and solve the question yourself. That’s my best advice.
If you’re from JC, and you are generally good at Maths and Physics; I think that’s a good sign; as for my friends from Poly, they were from some Triple-E related course, or some Environmental Engineering course and they did graduate with a degree but it is a common sight to see frustrated and stressed direct Year 2s (from poly) during lessons.
From what I’ve noticed, students good in AutoCAD drawing (professional drawing software) are quite in demand. Everybody hates AutoCAD drawing in our course and there are rare gems that like it and they end up OT-ing at work because they’ve been targeted. PRO TIP: if you don’t want to do it, don’t say that you are good at it at your internship cause they will make you do it!
In general, the AutoCAD drawing is taught in the first year, and it doesn’t show up until the IDP in the final year. Even for that, among 10 people, only 1 guy will do the architect drawing. But it’s a good skill to have if you want to be ambitious.
After graduation, a lot of students will get into industries centering around structural, GeoTech engineering or consulting type of work. In general, Civil Engineers do make pretty good money. They might eventually set up their own company or become consultants, then they do pretty well.
The jobs you can get into are:
A contractor is the guy you go to when you want to build. He’s the one handling the workers, and proposes the entire plan. If you’re going to be a contractor, if you’re going to be doing a lot of field work, you will have to be someone who can work under the sun and you’ll need leadership management and street-smartness. This is a career that is dependent on how you can communicate with people effectively. You’re going to be handling workers and other engineers.
Then the contractor has to go to a consultant and ask for approval. The consultant does the calculations and approves it with a fee. In some ways, the consultant does get a better pay than the contractor; but once you get past the breaking stage and get a big pay, nothing is going to stop you.
My professor once said that if you’re a contractor, you are highly recommended to drive a Mercedes or else you don’t have respect – don’t ask me, the industry has its own weird rules. It’s not a stylish job, you’re not going to wear a coat and a suit, not like what people do in the CBD. You’re probably going to go to sites, you’re going to go offshore, you might go to somewhere in the middle of the ocean. Singapore might do some floating ground projects.
There’s one famous professor in my own school, he is the man who invented floating concrete. If you’re going to do something within this field, you could even be in the middle of the ocean. It’s not a sexy job, so be prepared for that. It’s more chill, people don’t dress up, nobody is going to care!
There’s also the possibility of becoming a Professional Engineer (PE). Being a PE means that you have the capability to lend your services directly to the public rather than through organisations. So if you’re a PE in Civil Engineering it means companies/people can come to you with an engineer’s plan, then you confirm that the building can be built, and that it’s a safe building based on all the requirements that BCA has. A PE has the authority to validate the calculations made in these plans, saying that they are going to be responsible if something happens to this. A PE signs off and says that they’re sure that these drawings are safe, and that they can be built. It’s a great responsibility, but it also pays really well; one successful contract can get you $5k or something like that! Or you can also use the certificate to get big companies to give you higher pay because your signature is worth money.
My biggest advice for that, coming from someone I know that has already become a PE, is to try to take the exam or study for the exam as early as possible. You can fail as much as you want. As you start getting older, it’s harder to study for it. Or you can start off as an engineer, gain a bit of experience, then start prepping to become a consultant/PE later on.
You can also join a consultant company. Consultancy is super general; you can join any Big 4 or some other firm like Deloitte/KPMG and learn from your seniors. Generally, a consultant firm has to be very familiar with Singapore rules, they get the project and provide recommendations on how to refine it.
If you become a consultant in a niche field like traffic engineering, it seems to pay better than the other fields – the starting salary for these niche fields are a lot higher!
Listening to me, you might think that for 4 years, “she did something she didn’t like, she must have hated it,” You’re right. The truth is, I did hate it.
I found a silver lining: which is the importance of thinking in a strategic way. After 4 years in Engineering, when you become used to the way of thinking, it becomes very useful when you become a startup founder or CEO. I can now see why my dad said that you can acquire business skills anywhere in your life, but engineering trains your mind to think in a step by step way.
If you’re thinking of doing a business degree, you might want to think twice: a lot of my friends who did business wishes that they did something more engineering related instead.
Personally, I’m not a fan of the JC system; purely because the focus is so much on academics and memory power. For A Levels, we literally learnt a lot of topics in depth and we’re expected to memorise the details.
For uni, the learning is incremental, because you have quizzes in between, you can see where you’re at, and what your flaws are. Your quizzes are about 20% each, and you have 2 quizzes before the exam which are about 60%. So a good way to secure the score is to work hard for the quizzes first.
For your final exam, it really depends.
My advice is to always have really good connections with your seniors, especially those who are 1 year older than you. Whatever they got tested on in their quiz, high chance the same questions come up in the quiz. They make the quiz slightly easier, but exam papers can be exposed to the world and they want to maintain a reputation.
But again, comparing JC life to Uni, Uni life is still a lot more fun.
Most of the Civil Engineering Students do Summer School in Korea, or do a Semester Exchange at Czech Republic. Semester exchange is the best, you can cover some of the harder core modules within that one semester exchange. If you go overseas, you can cover quite a lot of the core curriculum, and the subjects are ungraded (you just need to pass). This exchange usually happens in Year 3 Semester 1, and if you want, you can even overload and cover some content you were meant to cover in Year 3 Semester 2 or year 4. Keep in mind that for all the concepts you slacked through during the exchange program, it’ll come back to haunt you during the Year 4 IDP. For me, I went to South Korea.
Major Prescribed Elective (MPE) is an elective that you have to take in year 4, and it’s part of your core curriculum. If you’re someone who wants an easy subject for an MPE to get an A, the easiest you can take is the Engineering Economics elective, but I made a mistake and I took that in Korea, so it wasn’t counted in my GPA! So my advice would be to keep Engineering Economics to Year 4, because it’s one of the easiest to score. If you’re going to do exchange, choose the tougher ones like Hydraulics (freaking killer, can die, that’s how bad it is, try to escape if you can), Steel Design.
The major point is to keep Engineering Economics to Year 4 as an MPE. But definitely go overseas with your friends.
No, I didn’t get the opportunity to stay in the hall, but I heard that it’s actually quite fun. If you stay in Hall 1 or Hall 2 you need to clean the toilets or something, some halls are more expensive than others; there are some party halls, and there are some super sporty halls and there are some dance halls. I think Hall life requires some experimenting.
When you start looking for your first job, they will care about your GPA, so try your best to see if you can score.
After your undergraduate degree, many of my seniors applied for their Masters in NUS, because the Civil Engineering Masters covers a lot more topics for specialisation (e.g. Traffic Engineering) compared to NTU. So you can do your Civil Engineering bachelor’s in NUS or NTU, they’re overall the same, but if you want to do Masters within the field, I would recommend doing it at NUS.
I would sincerely advise everyone to work hard during the first year: I understand that you just joined uni, you’re having the first taste of independent life; please make sure you score well in your first year. Your first 2 semesters are going to be pretty important in terms of keeping you on the right track. If your grades are below from Day 1, it’ll be very difficult to pull it back up. Honestly, I’m not sure if this applies to other engineering disciplines, but it could be for all. In the first year if you enjoy and go partying and think that you have 3 more years, it doesn’t really work that way.
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.
The information contained in this website is intended to provide general guidance only. It should not be relied upon as professional advice and does not 100% guarantee admission into any course.
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