Name:Anonymous
Course + Year: NTU Sports Science and Management Y2
Scholarship Nanyang Scholarship
My course, Sports Science and Management (SSM), is separated into 2 specialisations mainly Sports Science or Sports Management to be chosen in Year 3 and 4. For Sports Science, the focus is on a variety of things like injuries, human anatomy, biomechanics and coaching as well. For Sports Management, it is more of things like sponsorships, management of teams and marketing.
I was from JC, and my subject combination was H2 Biology, Chemistry, Math and H1 Economics.
I want to be a physiotherapist. However, I did not want to take SIT Physiotherapy because I thought that it was too specialised. I know that for SIT their focus is on the elderly which is not my field of interest. I wanted to focus more on athletes because I was a past athlete myself and I used to get injured so I went to the physiotherapist and thought physiotherapy was very cool. I used to play basketball as my sport.
I considered biological sciences but I thought that it was too much biology so I wasn’t very interested. I wanted to go into medicine as well but my application was not accepted. Hence, I decided to take up SSM as my course.
I am currently on the Nanyang Scholarship, which is under NTU. It is bond-free, will cover full tuition fees and hall fees enough to cover for 1 to 1.5 semesters. The scholarship also provided one off subsidy for your laptop, priority and grant for overseas exchange. However, your GPA must be above 3.5 for your semesters and your conduct should be good.
One academic year has 2 semesters so you have 8 semesters here in the four year course. So for the first 2 semesters, the whole of the first year will be introductory courses where they will teach you about human anatomy and exercise physiology. The year 1 modules include sociology in sport and management of sports organisations. They give you broad topics such as Sociology in Management, human resources and marketing.
For the second year, it is more specific. They go into topics like exercise physiology, biomechanics, marketing and sponsorships. They go into selected topics from the broad spectrum in year 1. However, you can’t really choose because in SSM it is quite different unlike other courses where you can choose modules from a list. For us, it is pre-arranged so everyone is taking the same modules for year 1 and 2.
Moving on to year 3, once you specialise, they will provide you with choices depending on your specialisation. For me I am going into Sports Science, so some topics that I am offered are about nutrition, injury, physical activity and health so we are able to choose once we specialise. For year 4, the first semester will be a final year project while the last semester will be an internship.
Also, we have to complete external modules outside of our course. They are called unrestricted elective and general education modules. For general education modules, there is one in liberal arts, one in science and technology and one in business management. For unrestricted electives, it is up to you what you want to take. On top of this, we have to take 3 sports modules. In NTU they offer Learn to Play modules for a lot of sports such as basketball, tchoukball and volleyball. It is compulsory for us as a core module to take these 3 sports modules throughout the 4 years.
The topics that I covered are not inclusive of everything, more information about the modules can be found on the NTU website!
I think most of our lessons are between 1 hour lectures, 2 hour tutorials and 2 hours lectures and 1 hour tutorials. It is usually a combination of lectures and tutorials. However, for certain modules like coaching and injuries, we are split straight into seminar groups. I think it is because these modules have more practical aspects. The content-based modules will usually be lectures and tutorials.
Actually for SSM, I think the grading was supposed to be based on written exams but because of COVID a lot of things have changed. So I actually have not had final exams since Year 1 Semester 1. Due to COVID, they have changed it to assignments so there are a lot of papers to write such as research papers and reports. As for class participation, my experience is that it is not a big deal in SSM. There are times when the teacher wants someone to answer a question so they will pick from the namelist or just attendance marking. The teacher will only be strict about class participation on a few occurrences and you will have to be really participative.
I think it is quite balanced. Usually, we will have an equal amount of individual work as project work. There is usually one project for every module. The projects have a wide variety – sometimes you will have to make a video, while other times you will have to make a brochure or reports.
My least favourite module would be sociology because I have no idea what was going on and I was not interested. I took this module in Year 1 Semester 1. There was also another module in biomechanics but I think this is more subjective because I haven’t studied physics since Secondary 1. This made it harder for me to understand topics like pivot motion and kinematics for example which made me lost.
I honestly think SSM is quite well rounded so you don’t have to be good at biology, there are other components like physics as well. Most importantly, I believe you have to be interested in the sports scene. Especially for the management side, there is a lot on Singapore’s Sports Scene and happenings in the olympics. Also, those who are interested in coaching or research on sports-based stuff can consider SSM. Currently, I am involved in my research project on the effects of different amounts of food on training and their variables.
The top misconception is that we are all going to be PE teachers. No sir, we are not going to be PE teachers. There are other career perspectives but being a PE teacher is harder than you would think since you have to go through NIE as well.
Also, a lot of people perceive that we won’t be able to go into many different fields such as nutrition, physiotherapy, coach or even team manager and the marketing aspects of sport.
I honestly don’t have any regrets, really having a fun time here.
Okay, I would not say I am extremely clear on this. However, from my knowledge you can definitely go into research. There are Masters and PhDs in Sports Science and that is one area that you can branch into. It will be very beneficial for you to take SSM as a course if you are intending to go into such research.
I know the physiotherapy path because that is what I am intending to do. For this, after you graduate from SSM, you will probably be required to take an extended course at SIT for 2.5 years before you can become a physiotherapist.
SSM Students will have a semester long internship during their last semester and the internship varies per person.
I think it really depends on how you see it and what kind of person you are when it comes to studying. In university, for the period before COVID, within 1 semester you will have to learn a lot of knowledge and cram for finals since SSM has very little open book exams. However, most of the time you don’t really remember what you have learnt the previous semesters. I think that’s what’s stressful about it, having to chiong at one point of time every 13 weeks. For JC, it is different. Technically, you can just make sure you promote in J1 and Chiong for the last 4 months to half a year and you will probably get decent results. University is more of a sustained effort.
I would say my current course is not very stressful or competitive, at least not for my batch. There are about 70 odd people in my batch and everyone knows everyone so that is a good thing. If we have stuff that we clarify with our professors, we usually share it in a telegram group and that is very helpful. If the professors replied outside separately and it is important information, they would screenshot it and send it to the group as well. There is really not a lot of competitiveness, so there’s no snakes and everyone is very supportive of one another.
Yes usually, people in my course will go for exchange in year 3 after they specialise. Now, because of COVID, the number of universities that we are able to go to has been cut down by a lot as they are not offering spaces now. From what I know, there are only 4 to 5 universities that we can go to for now, so it is quite limited.
Yes, I am staying in hall. I think hall is honestly a good experience. Especially if you are coming to NTU since it is so far away, you should at least stay for 1 semester. It is really different especially for JC kids since they are usually more restricted compared to poly kids. For girls, they never go through the army so parents are stricter and staying in hall gives you some freedom. This freedom helps you mature because it trains your decision making.
The fun from hall activities is definitely part of it. This kind of memory is something you won’t really make somewhere else especially when you are in the working world next time. Hall is really a place where you have a lot of friends that are near you physically so it is very easy to meet and do activities together and forge very close bonds.
For me, I had more time in year 1 since generally, freshies have more time. For juniors, if you are thinking of joining any commitments, just go for it since year 1 will be your most free year. Personally, I joined the hall council where you get to take part in all the stuff that is happening around the hall. I got to organise events around the school, and you get to be in-charge of different things. As part of the hall council, you will be very involved in hall activities, like inter-hall games, sports, recreational and going down to support, which is really very fun. Also, I joined to be a group leader for orientation camp and made friends with freshies! I never really considered joining a proper school CCA because the training is a bit too intense. However, in year 2, they look at your results based on percentile and offer you to do a research project. Currently, I am doing a research project with a PhD student and that is taking up the bulk of my time now.
Don’t stress too much. All across, people are very willing to help and if you join SSM, do email your professors if you have any doubts. The professors in SSM will offer help happily and everytime I email them, they will get back to me in about 1 day. The responses they give are really sincere and they won’t try to brush you off. Just be brave when you need to clarify stuff.
Honestly, SSM is a chill course but of course they are busy times especially when there are deadlines to meet and report to submit. It will be good that you have a clear path on roughly which area you want to go since in SSM some stuff that are taught can be quite generalised.You may barely learn anything that is specialized in one area and that might be hard for you to progress into a certain career. For certain career paths like sports psychology, nutrition and physiotherapy, further studies would be required. Consider your future career and not just join SSM because it seems fun!
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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