National University of Singapore - NUS (reviews)

Perhaps the best part of NUS is the vast amount of opportunities it affords it’s students. It’s almost as if every week there’s a new career fair, industrial visit, hackathon, or any other competition or event for it’s students to join. NUS also offers multiple exchange programs ranging from 3 to 12 months (see the NOC programme) to grant it’s students a more international outlook upon their graduation.

There is a general atmosphere here that employability isn’t an issue once we graduate.

It’s just unfortunate that it seems most students don’t utilize these opportunities the best they can, but this attitude is simply a by-product of the results-oriented education system in Singapore that can be chalked up to the lack of diversity in the student body beyond Singaporeans.

Perhaps bringing in more international students will help skew the results-focused nature of academics at NUS to a focus on more holistic education and development – what I personally believe a university education is really worth.

However, with the right mindset and attitude, I believe NUS can truly offer a world class education, provided you’re willing to put in the extra effort.

There is an issue of overcrowding during peak hours such as before morning class and lunch time. This results in uncomfortable travelling experience for many students, it also becomes dangerous when the drivers make steep turns and brakes suddenly.

Coming from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, what I greatly enjoyed was the sheer breadth of courses available within the faculty and encouragement to take courses outside our faculty as well. Courses were always engaging, and professors and lecturers often gave students the freedom to pick topics for their final term papers or presentation and exercise creativity – for example, my interest in Art History meant that I could often delve deeper into this interest in my main academic leanings of Political Science and History. Professors and lecturers made themselves readily available to the students, and were approachable. During my time in NUS, there was a noticeable effort to invest in the students’ global experiences (Exchange Programmes, Summer School, NUS Overseas College) – I truly believe that NUS was sincere in allowing as many students to have overseas experiences in spite of financial capabilities, and if one made the effort, the Centre for Future Ready Graduates was useful and invested in the potential careers of students too. When a friend from another local university did a local exchange to NUS, he remarked that NUS students truly loved to learn. I was content being surrounded by people who pursued their Arts/Social Sciences disciplines with a love for the content. It is also dynamic to be in a university that simply has so many different disciplines and faculties – one is just surrounded by people of varying interests and experiences, and forces them to look beyond their majors.

Of course, NUS is commonly known for being too theoretical and content-focused. This is up to the students’ prerogatives on how they want to exact their education and mould it for their lives, but generally NUS feels comfortable and safe within the academic realm – there is no push towards internships or whatnot that other universities might focus on. This could be a con.

Another thing I did not like about NUS in recent times was the blatant grade inflation – that juniors from the 2014/5 batch could have liberties to S/U a lot more modules than their seniors could in some bid to take the focus away from grades, and towards learning and experimenting.

Nevertheless, I greatly cherished my time in NUS and would highly recommend it.