Course + Year: NUS BEng (ME) Y4
Scholarship: No
So Mechanical stands for movement: you’ll basically be learning how things move.
We have 3 broad things we learn:
Other things we learn about but not in-depth:
Thermodynamics will teach you how work and heat flows: let’s say you have a specific heat source, like a steam turbine in an electrical power plant. You’ll learn how much heat you have to input for the steam, and how this steam can rotate the turbine, how much power can the turbine fit into the generator, and how much electricity the generator can provide. As an engineer working for a company, you have to think in terms of feasibility and profit. Is the system profitable? Are we using too many raw materials to generate heat and is the process profitable?
Also, heat and energy are not to be taken lightly. Systems use heat to generate power(Car, Airplanes, Rockets, Ships). But the same heat can blow up your system. So as an engineer, you have to design the system in a way such that the heat is used to generate useful power instead of it compromising your system blowing stuff up.
For fluid mechanics, you’ll basically learn how fluid moves and carries energy, because as a mechanical engineer you have to deal with fluids moving here and there. Fluids have the ability to transfer useful work and heat from point A to point B. So if fluid moves from point A to point B, are there any energy losses? Let’s say you have a manufacturing plant, and you’re moving coolants through the pipes to cool down ur system. You want to plan ahead to ensure that there’s enough coolant reaching your manufacturing plant through the pipes, find the exact amount, and design the pipes accordingly such that your system is cooled in an effective manner in terms of cost and function. If there are energy losses, you want to be able to account for it and make the appropriate changes in your design.
You will also learn some structural stuff as part of structural engineering. Let’s say you want to build a car. There are sports cars (Nissan 350Z), race cars (F1 Cars), supercars (Lamborghini Huracan) or your normal economic family car (Honda Civic). As your car rides on the road, it experiences forces acting on its structure – people sitting in the car, other forces from the road while the wheels hit the road. So you wouldn’t want your car to collapse after 1 year but instead, last for its lifetime, right? And also, you can expect an F1 car to experience much higher loads and stresses compared to a family car as the F1cars fly at screaming speeds. So as a mechanical engineer, you learn how to design the structure, and how to calculate the forces experienced via the structure. Then you learn how to apply this to various structures, both static structures and dynamic structures (structures that move around, like the engine’s components and wheels in this case). You will then learn how to implement such structures and materials for various uses and purposes in different applications.
A good example will be the dilemma of strength vs weight. You can drive cocooned in a hunk of metal on the roads. It will be 100% safe (for you) and your car will never break down as its very strong. But you won’t get very far or be able to drive fast as a lot of fuel will be used up to power such a heavy car. So, the job of a mechanical engineer will be to come up with a structure which hits the sweet spot: its strong enough to be safe as well as light enough to be fuel efficient.
Of course, there are specialisations as well: mine is the aerospace engineering specialisation. For this particular specialisation, you learn stuff about planes: aerodynamics like how a plane flies, what are the forces experienced by the plane, what are some design cues that you can look out for, and how the plane would behave if you change certain parts. I took some modules like experimental fluid mechanics for my specialisation.
So for experimental fluid mechanics, if you want to build a huge plane, as a company you can’t just invest millions of dollars to straightaway build the plane and fly: you have to do a lot of small scale testing. So if you want to build a plane 100m in size, you’ll want to build a scale model maybe 1-2m in size first for testing. It’s much smaller and cheaper but replicates the same structural cues and shape of the actual aeroplane which you would wanna build. Then after that, you want to do wind tunnel testing to observe its aerodynamic characteristics: it’s basically a tunnel with a fan that basically blows air through the entire tunnel to simulate a plane flying in midair. We’ll learn stuff like that: how to design the wind tunnel, the different parameters to put in the wind tunnel such that the test is accurate, and how you would capture data and stuff to be finally applied in designing the actual 100m aeroplane.
That’s basically mechanical engineering in a nutshell!
I studied Aerospace Engineering in Ngee Ann Poly. I chose to go to Poly purely due to interest: because I was interested in aeroplanes and how airplanes fly and everything; all the boring engineering stuff. If you want to go to Uni after going to poly, you have to choose related courses which have module carryover.
I always liked engineering, and even when I graduated from Poly, I was still in love with engineering. I thought: this was the course for me because I really liked it. There are a few courses which let you carry over credits; which means that instead of studying for 4 years in uni, you study for 3 years.
Biochemical engineering and mechanical engineering were the 2 courses that were related to the aerospace engineering that I studied and allowed for module carryovers. (Aerospace engineering in Ngee Ann Poly was under the Mechanical Engineering group.) That’s what led me to Mechanical Engineering at NUS!
I was actually considering NTU aerospace engineering. I actually applied for both and I got both offers. But I consulted my father, my father’s friends and his colleagues: he has some of his colleagues that are in NUS Mechanical Engineering, and they said that it would be better if I chose a course which is more broad so I could diversify to different industries when I graduated. Thus, I chose Mech Engineering over Aerospace Engineering.
I was pretty confident that I would get into NUS Mechanical Engineering, so I just applied one there and one here. I can’t really remember, I’m not very sure about that.
I think most of the students in Poly do have aspirations to further their studies in uni. It really depends: most of my friends decided to go to uni, but I have some friends who want to have some income, so they start working first, then from there see how things go. They might want to learn more about the industry before they decide if they want to carry on with engineering.
I have other friends who actually went to political science after studying engineering in poly. One friend of mine did very well in poly, but for uni he decided to give up engineering and go into Political Science.
It all depends. I feel like as you age, your interest fluctuates; your view in life fluctuates!
You just see which course has transferable modules. I’m sure you can change course from Poly to Uni, but your module credits won’t be transferred. So instead of 3 years you might have to do 4 years. You might want to consider if the knowledge you picked up in Poly is transferable to your uni course as well.
I would actually say: to be honest – to be 100% honest – it doesn’t really matter. Just choose a course that you are interested in.
In uni, you have tons of opportunities to try out different things. You have tons of projects that you can participate in. For example, in NUS we have this thing called the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme (UROP), in which students approach professors and assist them in their research! It doesn’t have to be strictly related to your course/major. I have a friend in mechanical engineering who took part in research involving detection of cancer cells/some bacteria (kind of like biomedical engineering) with image processing (programming-related).
Also, you are free to do your own thing. For example I’m in Mechanical Engineering, but if I find something interesting in Civil Engineering, there’s nothing stopping me from downloading a software to analyse a structure or learn more about Civil engineering. Even some projects (like Final Year Project) may not be directly related to your major. So I would say that the course doesn’t really matter – but obviously you have to take and read modules which are in for your course of study. So I would say just choose the course that you’re actually interested in doing. If not it can get painful and draggy real soon.
Another piece of advice would be to go to the websites of all the different unis and choose a specific course that you are interested in, as these websites list out all the modules that the course offers. Then you can do a quick Google search on what the modules are about to get an idea of how uni would be like for that course.
For Poly students, you need to clear 120 credit units while JC students need to clear 160 credit units (40CUs/Year). But don’t have to worry about it; when you enrol into the course they’ll give you a general plan to follow; if you follow the plan, you can definitely complete the credit units.
First year will be more general modules: there’s, all the mathematics modules and all the general education kind of fluff modules that aren’t directly related to Mechanical Engineering.
For your 2nd year, it’ll be more of core modules related to engineering, like strength of materials, fluid mechanics and thermodynamics and a few other modules related to the course.
For the 3rd year:
1st semester you’ll probably have an internship
2nd semester you’ll probably have 2 technical electives, and your design project.
TEs (technical electives) may be part of your specialisation, or they may be modules you need to fulfil based on the course’s requirements for graduation. These are modules you can choose and bid for.
Design project is where you’re given a task from a company. For me, I worked with 3M, which develops tapes and other materials. They had this handheld sanding machine. We had to come up with a mechanism/structure to help alleviate wrist pain. Imagine you’re standing and u have the use the device on something above your head while arching your back flexing your wrist in an awkward position; so we had to come up with a mechanical structure that can help them out by eliminating the need to stress the back and wrists. We did this for our design project, with 5-6 people. (Note: for some courses, like design engineering or process engineering, their design project is 12 CUs instead of 6 CUs; so on exchange programs they take lesser TEs. So it really depends on courses.). Many of the Design Projects help to solve real world problems.
In year 4, you’ll be finishing up remaining TEs or any General Elective Modules that you have, and focusing on your Final Year Project. It’s not for every major (other engineering majors might take specialisation modules instead), but for mechanical engineering, it’s a must to take your Final Year Project (FYP).
For the Final Year Project, the scope of the project is pretty broad! Not all the projects have to do with mechanical engineering; some have to do with Civil Engineering stuff, some have to do with Aerospace Engineering, and some are to do with Programming.
Lessons are lecture based with a hall of 400 students. Most of the lectures will be uploaded online in a video format. But this is for modules until year 3 at max. TEs and some of the GEs will not be webcasted due to the professor’s wish or because the class size is too small. The videos will be uploaded 1-2 days after the lecture is done and they can be played at 1.5x or 2x speed when you are watching them.
There is no attendance taken for lectures or tutorials. However, some tutorials will have in-class assignments. So you can’t escape them. Consultations slots with professors are also available in order to clarify your doubts about assignments or the modules.
Grading is based on Grade Point Averages (GPA). A is 5, A- is 4.5, B+ is 4 and so on. Your grade is determined by the bell curve and how well your peers have done for the paper. If your paper is tough, the bell curve will be less steep, like a hill, and the mark range for a B+ grade will be broader. If your paper is easy, the bell curve will be steep, like a sharp mountain, and the mark range for B+ is much narrower. The difference in a single grade (from A- to B+) may be 2-3 marks compared to 5-7 marks for a tougher paper.
If you are wondering, you can take more modules to push up your grades, so if you play too much the first 2 years, and your GPA ends up lower, in the next 2 years you can take 1-2 extra modules each semester to make up for the grades – but obviously you need to do well for them to pull up your grades lah! For example, by the end of year 3, your GPA is 3.9 but you are left with FYP and only 3 other TEs. But you are afraid that you may not be able to score well enough for them to push your GPA up to a 4. In this case, you can take 1 extra module, outside of your course requirements, for each of the 2 semesters in year 4 in order to score well for them and push ur grade up. These have to be modules which you are comfortable with. For me, I knew that the module about Internal Combustion Engines is easy to score as the concepts taught in the module were previously taught in many other modules as well. So, I took it in order to push my GPA up.
Okay, I feel that in Mechanical Engineering, the course is extremely theory based, especially for NUS Mechanical Engineering. I would say that 85-90% of the course is mostly individual work. For the most part, it’s all just theory. Which is a bad thing. Obviously it’s good to know your stuff and your theory, but if you don’t have much project work, I feel like it goes to waste because you don’t really know how to apply it.
Other than Design Project, I think it’s about 10% project work in Mechanical Engineering. Other than that, there are small small 10-20% assignments/projects done in pairs.
If you’re good in maths, physics and problem solving, then I feel that this course is good for you.
For the most part it’s basically math and physics. But of course it’s not just that; for example, for strength of materials you still need to have a good idea of geometry, and be able to see things from different perspectives.
In Physics, they might put a diagram in front of you and ask you to solve for forces, but in Mechanical Engineering it’s a whole problem-solving process in which you have to think of broad solutions, then zoom in and think from other perspectives whether the various solutions will work for it.
I mostly knew what to expect (like modules, equations) because I took aerospace engineering in Poly. I knew about the modules that we would take, and we’re using the exact same equations from Poly.
But one thing is: in university, some modules are a lot more in depth. For example, in Strength of Materials, they went very deep into the derivation of the formula. You break down the structure into an infinitesimally small point and then you do integration 5-6 times and end up with the formula. This was extremely confusing for us. We didn’t know whether it would be tested in the exams or whatever. The professor also didn’t tell us clearly; he would just expect us to know. It wasn’t clear if we were expected to know this for exams, but in the end the professor just tested us on the application of the general formulae.
The amount of information you have to learn is also a lot. Out of 10 concepts taught, you’ll only be tested on 4-5 concepts in the exam. You basically have to learn twice the amount of concepts you’ll be tested on.
This was something I didn’t expect because in Poly, the exams were quite straightforward and really followed the structure of the past year papers. But in NUS they’ll keep refreshing the exam questions; the exam questions you get for this year will be nothing like what your seniors got last year. So even if you do the past year papers, you won’t really get good practice. So it really tests your intelligence and understanding of the topic.
As for regrets, obviously many people think that university is the time to network with people, make friends, chill here and there, but I think I chilled a bit too much. You literally have 3-month long summer breaks which is a huge amount of downtime, equivalent to almost 1 year.
I regret not using that time to further my skills – like learn a new software to give me an edge when I graduate. I basically spent the time just watching movies and playing games. I could do so many other things, like learn a new language, or do a part-time job. So that’s something I regret: not using that time productively.
There is a broad range of career options for Mechanical engineering students.
You can specialise in machine learning, optimising and automating processes using AI or other programs that you write. These sorts of programs can be applied to Mechanical Engineering, like making a UAV fly in a certain manner; as it flies more and more, it’ll adjust its own flight path. You’re using your coding skills to directly affect a mechanical system.
Another possibility is MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul). It’s the biggest industry, at least for aerospace. The aerospace industry is quite big in Singapore. They’re looking for a lot of mechanical engineers who can be flight/design engineers for MRO. MRO requires them to source for the correct parts, come up with new and improved fixtures, and use new methods to carry out inspections.
Next would be R&D. This is the most interesting part! You get to come up with your own design, and this requires a lot of testing and analysis. There’s a lot of software involved: there’s this software called ANSYS (a final element analysis software).
You can draw a structure out using a 3D modelling software, then put it into ANSYS. The software then simulates forces for you. Let’s say you have a car: you can input the 4 forces on the 4 wheels. The software will give you the stresses and strains experienced by the car at different parts, then you can identify which areas are under extremely high stress and bound to fail faster than the other parts. Then you can possibly consider: I need to make this part thicker, or I need to make this part stronger.
But in Singapore there’s not much R&D and only a few companies do it. Hence there are lesser job opportunities.
The next would be process engineers. There’s quite a lot of manufacturing plants in Singapore, so companies are hiring a lot of mechanical engineers to oversee the entire manufacturing process, or come up with new designs or ways to improve the manufacturing process.
There are also Tool Engineers that are related. There’s a lot of machines used to make stuff. You need mechanical engineers to ensure that the correct tools (e.g. drills / mill or turning machines) are used and the correct materials are sourced to minimise costs & wastage. A company might ask a tool engineer: If I order this part, how long will it last? For a period of 1 year, how much money are we spending on tools / how much can we spend for our process to continue profitably? The engineer will weigh the pros & cons and suggest accordingly. .
You can branch out as well into oil and gas, or UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles). UAVs is a new up-and-coming industry: a lot of countries are trying to integrate drones into various processes for visual inspection and taking measurements remotely etc.
For the internships I did, we did aerial mapping for a Civil Engineering company. We mapped the terrain using a UAV to import it into their modelling software. So we used a small drone and we went on different terrains, tried to map the terrains and calculated the accuracy. We had to test out different types of terrains and find the deviance in accuracies. But mine wasn’t a typical internship so that’s all I have to say about internships!
The content in Uni is way more stressful. Poly was a breeze compared to Uni.
In Poly, you can study 3 days before the paper and still be able to do well. But for Uni, you have to spend at least 1 week per module. If you’ve 4 modules, then you’ve to start studying like 4 weeks before the exam date.
The type of studying you do is different. Poly is a lot more chill, you can study 4-5 hours a day; but in Uni it’s legit mugging. It’s similar to the mugging culture before Os or As; you just mug for the whole day. So you’ve 6-8 semesters of that. Before the end of each semester you shut yourself off for about 1 month just studying 10 hours every day. But of course, there are some smart students who don’t have to study as hard but still score very well.
It’s also quite competitive. They grade based on a bell curve in uni, so it depends directly on your peers’ results. Usually, for Mechanical Engineering you have 4 broad questions (one for each topic) in a finals paper. A tough paper might have 2 extremely hard questions out of the 4. For these papers, the bell curve will be more spread out and not as steep. In that case, there’ll be a lot of Error Carried Forward (ECF) and you would generally do alright. The best part is if you still can do the hard questions, then you’ll generally be able to score very well for that module.
For exchanges, you can map your modules. Mapping means you can take whatever modules overseas instead of in NUS, subject to approval by the school.
In NUS there’s also this thing called NUS Overseas College (NOC). It’s a 1 year long programme in which you work in a startup overseas. For Mechanical Engineering right now, there are a lot of opportunities in Canada where they have a few startup companies. If there’s a startup company that you want to work in but is not on the list, you can propose to NUS as well.
You’ll be working in the company for 1 year overseas and getting a pay of around $2k. You’ll also be able to map your internship and FYP overseas. That’s quite a lot of MCs, so your 1 year over there is not wasted.
No I didn’t stay in halls lah. But you can stay in halls in NUS if you like hall culture. Apart from halls, there are Residential Colleges (RCs) where you have to take a module offered by the college. These colleges are mostly located at Utown which is sort of like the downtown of NUS. The admission fees are slightly higher for these. You can find out more about halls and RCs during NUS open house.
For Mechanical Engineering, since the stuff we study can get quite intense at times, I would say the most important thing is to find your groove. Different people have different grooves.
The semester is 16 weeks. Its broken down into the first 6 weeks (the first term), 1 week study break, then your midterms and finally 7 more weeks and then lastly followed by 2 examination weeks. For NUS Mechanical Engineering there’re not many midterms but instead, most modules have finals with high weightage. Most modules, especially the core modules, have 2 labs with 15% each, then your final paper is 70%. That’s most modules for mechanical engineering. For me, I just lepak, go out, do the stuff I want until mid/end March and do the bare minimum to keep up with the module, which is usually finishing up lab work or small assignments worth 10% to 15%. After that I’ll really sit down and study for the next 5 weeks. I’ll stop going out as often (probably none at all), stop meeting my friends, stop texting. So for me it’s work hard play hard lah. If studying consistently works better for you, do that instead because it’s your groove.
There is no better way as it’s all up to your own style. What works for you may not work for others as well and vice versa. So it’s important for you to find your groove. I find that many of my friends did better when they studied together on campus. But I couldn’t; I would just end up chilling with them instead haha. So what I will do is maybe 2 or 3 days before the exams, join my friends through a call to discuss concepts and share solutions to maximise the productivity and we all can learn from each other.
Apart from studying, Uni grants you the opportunity to network with people and do the things you love. You will meet many like-minded individuals as well as people with unique stories and backgrounds. You will form thick bonds with many of them and they will become constants in your lives. There are many societies and interest groups that you can join in NUS where you will meet new people. Uni also grants you opportunities to do some crazy stuff that you would have never even thought about doing. But when people come together, anything is possible.
Apart from developing your interests, Uni also has a lot of downtime; a total of 4.5. This is a good time to improve your skills or manage your finances. A good way to kill two birds with one stone is to do 3-month internships during the summer or form a small enterprise on your own. Experience really is the best teacher. You can learn so much in Uni but you will never be able to truly understand something until you do it first hand.
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.
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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