<p>1234d: Haha, that is true… Well i can deal with cold, just not rainy and cold… But i will look more into that (imho food and transport etc are all crazily expensive there)</p>
<p>Also, i will not be able to send in prelim grades because unfortunately, during the time of my Prelims, i was down with H1N1 and could not sit for the tests (This is sad) However, i did manage to take the tests and got decent results, but this wasn’t written in my cert.</p>
<p>Prior to this, was a bit of a slacker in school and kinda mucked around quite a bit. So had decent, but nowhere near the standard the top universities look at… </p>
<p>Thanks for the comment about Dutch passport, gave me some glimmer of hope there! (I’m crossing my fingers that this is true!)</p>
<p>frankchn: Yeah i know you guys have it late, but i made the comment cause i was watching some reality show just now, and Rob Kardashian was already graduated from college at 21… :/</p>
<p>I am also planning to volunteer from after March till whenever I have to go to the US, and work after repeating the A levels… would that be a bit too laxed for them?</p>
<p>Well, Terence Tao got his Masters at 17, his Ph.D. by 20 and started advising graduate students (some much older than him) at UCLA. I have long since concluded that I am no genius so I shouldn’t compare :p.</p>
<p>Glad to know there’s a bustling SG community on this thing xD
Well for me now I’m freaking out over how to pay for the whole thing - scholarships are out of the question with my A level grades (scraping out the bottom of the HC pile here).</p>
<p>And any of you guys know how to look at your UC applications again? Want to see what I entered for my school grades so I know which certs to submit (got accepted into UCB).</p>
Schools give credit for A level results. I’m not an A-level grad, so I’m going to invite screwitlah to chime in on his experience with Princeton.</p>
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Non-needblind schools do give scholarships to international schools too. For example, Vanderbilt and USC. My bestie was awarded full finaid to Vandy last year, and I know some S’poreans win the full-tuition scholarship to USC. I get the idea that you’re very worried about your future after having a degree, and these schools are also very well-known in the US, not just the top 20 schools.</p>
<p>Well every school has very different criteria on how you skip a year, but most Singaporeans find that they can do it. I can’t give a general yes or no because the schools are so different. I did successfully apply to skip a year. You have to look up the invididual college websites yourself. where are you applying?</p>
<p>Hey guys, I’m back from a really long time ago. haha. I was just wondering, does anyone have time to give a brief overview of exactly how the education system works in most US unis? I’ve been reading and coming across terms like prerequisites, breadth, and all the courses which are labelled 11A, 17B etc etc etc and I am just wondering, what in the world would I know which courses to take?</p>
<p>I’m hoping for transfer of credits from my A Levels, and many school websites say something like ‘English 1R Not Required’, and I kind of gathered that it’s a ‘choose your own courses’ type of system except it has to satisfy certain prerequisites/breadth requirements??</p>
<p>Any explanation would really help, thanks guys. :)</p>
<p>In most US universities, you can take any class you want (subject to pre-requisite - that is, you cannot take a higher-level class [e.g. Calculus II] without taking a lower-level class [e.g. Calculus I] first). You can also graduate at the end of any quarter/semester so long as you meet your university and major requirements. </p>
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<p>Yep, it is something like that =p and you can get credit and place out of certain courses based on your A-level results.</p>
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<p>Look at the university graduation requirements, requirements of your specific major and ask for advice from your seniors.</p>
<p>hello just wanna get some feedback from other fellow singaporean students.
i just got accepted as boston university for biochemistry. but i can’t decide if i will want to stay in singapore and go to nus, or go to BU. cuz actually nus doesnt have biochemistry, so if i go there i’ll do life sciences (which is closest what i want to do). i’ve read a lot of stuff online saying BU isnt that good, and nus would be a better choice in terms of ranking. but i’d like to get other opinions. what do you guys think?? i intend to do my masters in US btw.</p>
<p>I’ve just heard that BU gives zip financial aid to internationals! That’s a big minus. Which means no matter how well you do over the four years, there will be no merit scholarships. I’m biased, but NUS just does not have the glitz and excitement of a US college.</p>
<p>i have a couple of friends in BU, and they say it has a wonderful academic environment, with great supportive faculty. don’t be put off by the ranking, it’s really not that bad. just as a “consolation”, it has a great social scene too. finally, getting out of singapore for a while might be a life-changing experience for you.</p>
<p>Don’t focus your criteria for a college too narrowly. You find that</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The rankings aren’t a good indicator of education quality that you’ll get from the school. Peer review is an important criteria in these rankings - but with a sample size of 10,000 or so, how are they going to get equally bias-free results between NUS and BU? Citation counts don’t really affect you. Taking the product of faculties and universities, you have easily more number of faculties in total than surveys from employers - so employer reviews definitely cannot be generalized across all faculties. Faculty-to-student ratios aren’t commensurable quantities as these depend much on the type of university. If it does, then you will find that NUS should be a very bad school, with something like 16:1.</p></li>
<li><p>The ranking position of NUS, BU etc. will shift a lot in the span of 4 years (more say than HYPSM), or even by the time you’ve graduated. If you chose NUS for its ranking, and one day find that it is behind BU, then you’ll be terribly disappointed. And in whichever case, it is only disappointment - it seems to illustrate that the ranking doesn’t reflect the satisfaction you’ll get from your school.</p></li>
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<p>What sort of university and academic culture do you want?
What type of experience do you want?
What sort of campus do you like?
You’re doing an academic program - how do the undergraduate research opportunities compare?
What sort of academic resources are available to you - do you intend to visit conferences?
What is the frequency of seminars/conferences/talks by leading researchers in the field at either university?
College is a good time to make connections - do you intend to work locally, or overseas? Enter academics - that’s where visiting conferences can help (as above)?</p>
<p>Frank mentioned Terence Tao: he received his undergraduate degree from a university which was ranked top 400 in the world - if you get my point.</p>
<p>Edit: By the way, you will find that it is much easier to transfer between US colleges, if you intend to migrate across the ranking gradient, than from NUS to an US college.</p>
<p>^^ This is a really pragmatic question that many of us non-HYPSM students are facing now lor.</p>
<p>NUS may be less exciting (and so far out relative to the rest of Sg) but it IS stable. A degree from NUS (and even NTU) is sufficiently recognised to secure a stable job, etcetc. Local uni= stability.</p>
<p>I got some institutional scholarships from respectable but little-known (TOTALLY unheard-of in Sg) LACs. I like the colleges, and I’m dying for the whole US experience. I was the type who grew up really Westernized and moved in a circle that always light-hearted complained how ‘boring and rigid Sg is’. You know the type!</p>
<p>Advice me please! Can I seriously NEVER find a job in Sg if I graduate from a respectable but unheard-of LAC? Sounds like career suicide in Sg right? Sigh.</p>
<p>Well, some employers might not have heard of smaller LACs in Singapore - but why restrict yourself to finding a job only in Singapore after graduation in the first place? </p>
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<p>If you are really dying for the US college experience - I say go for it! If you think your college is not well-known enough then just get a Masters at HYPSM or something to supplement your Bachelors degree.</p>
<p>So that means its easier to get into a good post-grad program in the US if you come from a top 30 LAC than NUS? How about UK and other European Uni programs?</p>