What to expect – NTU exchange

By Thatthep Sae-Lim. Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Now that my exchange had ended for a few months, I finally have the time to sit and reflect on my experiences at NTU. Although this was not my first time living in Singapore, I have definitely learnt a lot from this experience, simply because of the significant differences of how things are at NTU compared to UOM.

NTU in general

NTU campus is absolutely beautiful and fun to walk around. There are numerous buildings that are known to be one of the most beautiful university buildings in the world. The two most popular ones are the Hive (because it looks like a bee hive) and the newly built business school’s building, Gaia.

The Hive is actually the most popular building in the campus. I see tourists came from all over the world to take a picture of this building on a daily basis. Almost all my classes were here and if I’m being honest, the excitement of being in such an aesthetic building does fade over time. Unfortunately, you would forget about it by the tenth time you are there.

Some fun facts about the campus. The main buildings and lecture halls are actually connected as one whole, which allows you to walk from one place to the other without actually needing to go outside. This whole stretch of connected buildings is separated as North Spine (NS) and South Spine (SS). It would take you around 15-20 minutes to walk from one side to the other. Although that are around 5-6 bus stops along this stretch, walking is still the easiest way to go to places. Also, because all the buildings are connected, it is normal for students to find themselves being lost in the first few months (PS. I still couldn’t navigate the campus in my last week at NTU)

Modules and Academic Life

Lets move on to a more unpleasant topic. If you were to ask NTU exchangers what they disliked most about NTU, I can reassure you 9 out of 10 would say STARS.

STARS is the system NTU students and exchangers use to get pre-approval, plan, waitlist, and register for courses. The process of registering for a course is atrocious and exhausting, to say the very least. This is because exchange students are mainly restricted from popular courses and are the last priority for each course (NTU only allows exchangers to access STARS a few days/weeks after the full time students). I was fortunate enough to not have many requirements from my school in regard to the courses I need to take. However, I have seen exchangers stressing out because the courses they needed to take to graduate were not available.

My top tips is to get pre-approvals for as many modules as possible, access STARS early to register, and don’t give up on waitlisting!

Even though exchangers are not allowed on most popular courses, those courses are rather fundamental courses which are mostly taught at UOM anyways. I found most interesting courses fall within the less popular courses that we are allowed to take.

If you have the opportunity to do an exchange at another university, then it might be best for you to do something that is not offered at UOM.

FYI, NTU also allows students to take modules that are not within your course/school. I think this is especially interesting if you are interested in learning something new that is not necessarily related to your course.

I was also warned a lot about the high workload at UOM, even before sending in my exchange application. I am here to tell you that it is true. If I were to compare to UOM, the workload for one module at NTU is at least the workload of a semester at UOM. However, I found lectures and assignments there to be rather easier than UOM’s.

I’m still amazed and very proud of myself that I’ve survived. It might seem like an unpleasant experience, but personally I really enjoyed it as a challenge.

Unlike the UK, students treat staffs and professors with much more respect, almost like they are at a very much superior level. Regardless, I found NTU staffs and professors to be very helpful and approachable. Lastly, be prepared for a lot of group work. NTU values group and class contribution a lot, to the extent that there is normally at least one group work and class participation marks in each module. I barely have any group work or requirement to participate in classes at UOM. This is probably because classes in NTU is much smaller than UOM (most classes consist of around 10-20 students). I think working in group really helps with making friends. I’ve personally befriended many people from this.

I hope that this would somewhat help students who are going/consider going to NTU paint a picture of what life as an NTU exchanger is like.