<p>I posted this on another board, but I repost it here as just contributing my opinion.</p>
<p>Credentials: Ph.D. graduate student at UCLA
Program: Applied Linguistics</p>
<p>Thoughts: Having gone through years in the educational and academia scene (I spent 4 years teaching Sec and JC students in Singapore, got my B.A. and M.A. in NUS, taught US undergrads in UCLA as teaching assistants, did research assistant work for professor), I believe I may have some words of advice for Singaporeans (especially those in JCs with high hopes and expectations of studying in a prestigious US university).</p>
<p>(1) Really consider LACs: Major US research university in the US are famous because they do research and produce results. Which means their financial resources are dumped on recruiting ‘superstar’ professors and they concentrate on graduate students. Profs are focused on doing their own thing. All these means that undergrads are undercut in the process. LACs on the other hand do not have graduate programs and Profs main task is teaching well.</p>
<p>(2)Really consider NUS: Having personally seen the caliber and academic scene of the undergraduate program here, I have began to appreciate the academic rigor that NUS does provide. I agree that NUS may not accord the same amount of prestige as some US universities, but if you intend to go on to graduate school, you may be better off getting a solid foundation at NUS or one of the LACs. If you do not intend to go on to graduate school, then maybe the prestige of a US degree may get you somewhere…initially.</p>
<p>(3) Look ahead…really ahead: This point is related to point (2). If you are not committed to get a Ph.D. at the end of the day, or thinking that ‘I’m just going to get my undergrad degree and find a nice cozy job’, then where you get your degree may not matter that much! Yes, life after school is cut-throat, and climbing the career ladder depends much more on political acumen and guile. If you’re committed to going on to a Ph.D. program, then again it may not be such a good idea to get into a major US research university! As with point (1), you are getting undercut academically as an undergrad there; plus there is a possibility that competing with ‘too much brains’ might end you up with an ‘average’ that does not look good on a grad school application. And LACs have a huge success rate at sending their undergrads to prestigious grad school program, do the research!</p>
<p>In a nutshell, Singaporeans tends to overrate US and UK Uni, often at the expense of denigrating NUS, which is sad. Yes, undergrad education in NUS IS academically rigorous. And all the hype about ‘personal journey enlightenment and discovery’, I don’t think you need a US or UK university to do that, just don’t depend on your parents too much might do the trick. And about ‘academic and political freedom’, I think we need to understand academic and politics before freedom. Usually pple want freedom without working for it (read ‘speech without responsibility’), so I suggest understanding whatever you want to understand first (understand as in read and learn, not what you think it is), which for all purposes can be done adequately at NUS, before yielding to freedom.</p>
it’s alright man, you don’t need to feel it’s malicious. I assure you I’d be equally atrocious at the Chinese language, even though I did pretty well for higher chinese.</p>