Course + Year:NUS Statistics Y3
I took PCME (H1 Econs). My favourite subjects were Math and Chem, and those 2 subjects were the ones I did better in. I think using the subjects I took in JC to choose my course did more harm than good for me when I finally had to decide – I chose to take pure Mathematics at university level because I got a decent grade in math.
I eventually realised that Mathematics was way out of my expectations, and it seemed way harder than JC math so I switched to Statistics. If you ask me now, I would say that I would choose to study Communications and New Media because I realised that’s what I like instead.
To be honest, for myself and quite a number of people in my position, fresh out of JC, you don’t really have an idea of how university courses are going to be like. For me I really just chose by feels – “oh ya because my math is not bad,” so I just chose something related to math. I can’t really remember the rest of the courses I chose, but it was all math-related. I only used my A levels results as a basis for choosing. That happens when you don’t really know yourself and the world well, so my decision-making abilities were quite poor.
Before A Level results, I considered business. Back then, I remember that I didn’t choose business because I felt like if I wanted to do business, I should just go straight into the industry. Why would I spend 4 years and pay $40,000 just to learn about business? I feel like you learn the best on the job. Also, if you really want to learn business, then you should learn from a businessman rather than a professor because businessmen would have more experience. As I matured, I realized that that way of thinking was quite childish. Now, I feel that taking a business major will enable you to learn useful things to start a business. You can find most of the business related information online, but if you study in university the information is more curated and streamlined.
I was only considering NUS. The straightforward reason is because NUS was the highest ranking university. Since it’s known to be the best, I thought that definitely looked better on my resume as it is more recognised. My dad kept telling me to choose the one that is the most renowned – NUS, because when you step out into the working world, employers will tend to prefer graduates from that school.
I really had no idea back then. I just chose based on my grades. After I got the acceptance from NUS, entered the school and talked to my peers, I realised that most of the Math majors also had no idea what they wanted to do in the future. Most of us were like “Math degree can do what?”. Only those in Medicine and Law really know what they will be doing. Even now as a Y3, a lot of my friends don’t really know what they are going to do.
This scenario is very common:
“Eh bro, what you wanna do?”
“Actually, I also don’t know sia…”
For me, it was easy to make the switch. In the first year, if you want to switch your major within the faculty, and if the majors are very similar, you don’t even need to email the school. You just need to head to the website to change your major. The difficult part is if you want to change your faculty. You might need to email both faculties and maybe write an essay to justify your decision.
Personal tip – it’s good to switch majors as soon as possible if you have figured out what you want. After Y1, some people will doubt their decision, and ask themselves if they should continue. If after At the end of Y1, if you want to make the switch to an entirely different major, please do so. Y1 is the best time for you to switch majors. The school knows that your major is a very major decision for your future (pun intended) and they are quite understanding, so they will usually allow you to make the switch after Y1, even if it’s an entirely different major. It’s quite common to see students changing majors in Y1. If you were to hesitate, and switch in Y2/3, it’s super difficult and the school might not allow you to do so.
Simply put, I chose Stats because I didn’t have the courage to change to an entirely different faculty. But if you were to time-travel me back, I would slap myself and actually change to Communications and New Media. I was afraid that if I changed to an entirely different major, then my 1 year’s worth of efforts would be wasted. So, I just decided to stick with it for the remaining 3 years. But NO, don’t do that – you will suffer more. I’m suffering because what I’m studying is not what I like – but that doesn’t mean that uni is very torturous, okay? You’ll be fine one.
I would say that if you know what you want to do and what job you’re interested in, then choose something related to the job. Work backwards from there. If you totally don’t know what you want to do/what you’re interested in, then just choose something that you don’t hate.
If you hate it while you are studying for it, even if you get good grades, you shouldn’t do it because your uni life will suck. It’s another 4 years of studying something like that and it’s even more rigorous.
I’m taking Stats, which is under the Faculty of Science (FOS). I can speak more for the science faculty courses.Â
In your first year, you learn about the fundamentals. I took modules like linear algebra, calculus, and intro to stats (which is like H2 Math Stats). They make you relearn what you learn in JC because the school needs to cater to ppl who have not taken H2 math before. These mods are compulsory and you have to do it. Most of the content will be about what you learn in JC, but you have 4 months to learn it instead.
Bit by bit, you’ll have more flexibility to the mods you choose. There are certain compulsory mods that you must take and pass, and they make up half of your required modular credits. You can take the other mods of your choosing with the other half slowly.
Most of the intro mods you take in Y1 are the level 1000 mods. When you move on to the 2000s, you will learn things you have not learnt in JC, but it’s still very general. (e.g. statistics programs, differentiation, calculus)
If you want to do stats and specialise (Eg. in Finance Stats), those will come in the 3000 and 4000 mods. In order to take those mods, you need to clear the 1000 and 2000 mods first. If you want to study statistics, there’s going to be a lot of math still. I changed from Math to Stats because I thought that it was going to be a lot less theoretical. Pure math is very theoretical, but in stats you still need to have good knowledge about math. You get to learn more about statistical programs, and these programs are important especially since they may be those that you might use when you work in the future.
Pre-covid, exams were a lot like the school exams that I took in JC. You go to the school hall (in NUS there’s the multipurpose school hall) to take the exams. For NUS, we usually have midterms and finals, but for certain modules we don’t have finals – we only have mid-terms and some projects, and that’ll add up to your whole grade. The exams depend on how your professor wants to format it.
For science majors, most modules have midterms and finals which is the closest to exams we had in JC. If you’re in business, many mods don’t have finals and it usually comprises 2-3 projects relating to what you study in the mod. For FASS, it is more assignment based rather than final exam based.
At the university level, you are allowed to bring in a cheat sheet – an A4 size paper where you can write anything you want on both sides. For certain exams, it’s an open book exam and you can bring in anything you want!. In a way this is better than JC because in JC, if you know how to do the question but forget one formula, that’s it. I guess in uni it’s less like that because the professors focus on how much you can understand the concepts rather than how much you memorise.
If you study, there’s no way you’re going to fail. When I just finished JC, my seniors told me that JC is the hardest portion of your educational life. After JC, university will be easy. I was very positive when I began my university journey but I realised that that’s totally not the case, man. It’s not easier! I think it’s not easier because overall, you have much more content to study. In uni, you have 3-4 months before 1 finals exam, and the content is comparable to JC level content. But, there’s this thing called the bell curve. Based on my extensive research on the bell curve, in NUS, the passing grade is a D. Based on my research, I believe that it is near impossible to get F. To do so, you need to skip classes, skip lectures and not turn up for finals. If you were to attend everything with a poor understanding of the module, you won’t fail one. When a prof wants to fail a student, they have to write a report to the school to explain why they are failing the student.
It is this General Elective on public speaking. It was my favourite because I got the opportunity to speak in front of the class every single week. It’s quite interesting because you get to hear different people talk about different topics (ranging foreign from domestic workers to tea)!
Hwah. I really don’t know which one is my least favourite because I have a bunch of modules that I don’t like. In general, I would say I don’t like the statistics modules. The one module that I would bring up is probably the compulsory one I took in Y1 when I was still taking Math, MA1100. Wah, it was so bad for me.
You learn about the fundamentals in mathematics; there’s these things called axioms, and they are the basic rules of math. For example, the axioms of summation: you need to learn the theory behind that. I really questioned the reason why I needed to learn this, because when you go to work, no one is going to care about why 1+1=2.
For this module, you get penalised for wrong answers in your exams, so you can’t even anyhow whack your answers. That mod was so torturous, and that’s why I made the switch. But the good thing is the bell curve: on average I scored 20-30 marks for all my finals. But in the end, I got a C+ or a B because everyone did super badly, so the prof moderated it.
I’m not taking honours, so I have 120 Modular Credits (MCs) to fulfill. In these 120 MCs, 68 MCs are related to your major, and you can choose from whatever you like for the remaining 52 MCs = 13 modules. You can study areas outside your discipline with almost half of your credits. For Double majors though, you don’t have any room to take interdisciplinary modules (all your modules will be used for your major modules).
More information on programme requirements can be found here.
In uni, I would say the good thing is that you can plan the modules yourself. You take around 5 modules per semester. If the workload is evenly spread out every single semester, you won’t be very shag. (For example, you can choose 3 hard modules and 2 relatively easier modules per semester.)
To be honest, I got quite a lot of leisure time because I spaced out my easy mods. There are some people who want to finish everything quickly so in the first 2 years, they spam 6/7 modules every semester. Perhaps you can graduate earlier that way.
Personally I didn’t have much expectations regarding university. I expected most of the things that I learnt to not be of use when I stepped out of university, and that expectation was true. If you ask me what I learnt in the previous semester, I probably can’t answer 80% of it. You just pass the module then throw the knowledge out of the window.
Another thing which met my expectations, is that the Stats modules are relatively easier than the math modules. Math is really SUPER THEORETICAL but at least for Stats, you’re dealing with actual numbers and data.
There are a lot of things I don’t like…
The thing that I like is the fact that you get to meet a lot of incredible people.Clearly, as you can tell, I don’t belong in Stats/Math but I am there. There are people who really belong there and you get to see their amazing ability. When you talk to them and interact with them you realize that there’s no way that you’re going to get the A because to get the A you need to really do as well as them or if not even better than them. Meeting people like that really broadens your perspective. In JC, there are people with good grades also, but they don’t make you feel like getting good grades is unattainable.
The one thing I don’t like is that you won’t use the bulk of the knowledge you learn. It’s a huge waste of time and money. Another thing is the heavy workload for science modules. It’s so much higher than arts modules/business modules because for science, you really need to know the concept and have enough practice to grasp the concept. Arts modules are very abstract. All my science mods have 2 lectures and 1/2 tutorial but for arts mods every single week 1 lecture 1 tutorial. In science, if you miss one lecture, you cannot keep up.
No eh. I mean, I know people like that, but they’re not my friends. It takes a character to love Math or Stats. I wish that we were friends, so that I can try to be like them and can get better grades.
You don’t have to really love it but if doing it kills you from the inside then just don’t do it. You can be neutral with it.
If you are a JC student, then honestly there’s no other way. Sure, you can start a business or find a job with your JC certificate but that won’t get you anywhere. You need to weigh the opportunity cost to figure out whether it’s worth it. let’s say you go to uni for 4 years spending $40,000. You need to ask yourself how else you would be spending the time and money. If you really have something better to do, then sure. I feel that a uni degree is not a necessity in this day and age. If you get a uni degree, you will have better career prospects than a diploma holder. However, if you spend that 4 years to gain experience, and build up a portfolio, it might be more worth it for you.
Stats is not bad, especially because it’s really applicable in the modern world. There are places for you in the government sector and private sector. You can be a data analyst, go into the finance sector or be a data scientist. These are more on the lucrative side, and are very commonly found both in the public and private sector.
I have a friend who studies stats. Now he’s working as a data analyst in a private company. I asked him if he used the things he learnt, then he told me that what he learnt in the course is really not related to what he’s doing and he learnt everything himself. However, to get to that position, he required a degree to put him inside that door.
I got that settled before I started university, actually. Right now, I’m working as a financial consultant commonly known as an insurance agent. I’ve been doing it since year 1, and I know that’s what I’m going to do. And it’s not Stats related at all.
For me, I’m just studying the degree because:
1. In SG, it’s good to have a degree to fall back on
2. For my parents (my parents wanted me to go to university)
I went for an internship after my army and I learned about the career and felt that it was something I liked. I started doing it once I turned 21 and have been doing it since. I think it’s a good career for me. I’m very sure about this so I didn’t do other internships but I did do some side projects!
For your academics, be consistent. If you’re consistent, you can do better than someone who is smart.
You have to be consistent, especially for Stats/Science mods in general. You have 2 lectures + 1 tutorial, and it is very content heavy. If you miss 1 or 2 in between, it’s very difficult to catch up. So, keep up with the pace and clear your misconceptions. Cramming doesn’t work.
You cannot be afraid to talk to profs (if you don’t get it, just ask during the lecture/email them). It’s normal to not be able to understand. In fact, if you ask, everyone will probably like you because the majority of students in the lecture hall probably don’t understand as well. You should establish a presence to your profs, especially since they are the people who grade you.
As for personal advice – your studies are really not everything, and if you want to aim for good grades you should ask yourself why. In university, you have a lot of opportunities and a lot of room to play with. If you want good grades, you need to allocate a lot of time to get good grades. In JC, the bulk of your life is studies, so the opportunity cost for studying is low. In uni, you can do so many different things, so you need to ask yourself what it is that you really want to do. You may not get an answer but you need to keep asking yourself.The more you ask yourself, the closer you will be to knowing what you want. You need to know why you’re studying, don’t study blindly!
“Even if you regret it, it’s ok, it’s very normal. If you find out you regret, then you do something about it, that’s it. If you regret and don’t do anything about it, then that’s a problem.”
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