<p>@Hassaniman</p>
<p>I can only speak for Berkeley, but you have a slightly okay shot there. Beef up those ECs and write a kickass essay. How’s your GPA?</p>
<p>I’m also slightly confused. You’re a Singaporean, but a “freshman in high school” in NJ? Does that mean New Jersey or National Junior College or…? Your schedule resembles an American school.</p>
<p>@kennzt, sallywong</p>
<p>welcome :)</p>
<p>@trufflepuff</p>
<p>“It was much more difficult to score well in NUS than in UO in my English modules.”</p>
<p>and that’s why I feel local uni grads have a much more difficult time applying for grad school because nus/ntu grades seem “inferior” when compared to US grades.
same thing goes for when applying for civil service jobs. some ministries/stat boards peg your starting salary to your honours grading, so I’ve seen a first class grad from a academically-less-challenging foreign university (not UO but of similar standards) being paid more than second class honours local grads. in short - you’re being penalised by the grading curve. </p>
<p>“The department is not famous internationally, so you’ll have to take that into account.”</p>
<p>especially true if you plan to apply for grad school in future.</p>
<p>^ I agree. But this is only because it’s U of O. If it’s HYPSM/Berkeley/Caltech etc. who are known for being very academically challenging, then it’s not the case.</p>
<p>My S/O went to both Berkeley and NUS. From her remarks she didn’t consider NUS as challenging, though she noted that locals feel that way about American universities in general.</p>
<p>Everybody has a grass is greener mentality. Berkeley isn’t the top public university in the world for nothing. U of O does not compare. Neither do 99.99% of the schools in the world.</p>
<p>Yep. Did she go on exchange or did she study at Berkeley full-term?</p>
<p>I thought Berkeley would be challenging before coming here, but if you do a normal “American” courseload, to us Singaporeans (those who actually come here, at least, not all Singaporeans since I can’t speak for them) it’s a walk in the park. Unless you’re doing highly technical engineering/science courses. That’s why most of us don’t do “normal” courseloads (16 units, about 4 classes), opting for ~18-25 units instead (about 6-7 courses). </p>
<p>In any case we all have to hope employers recognise the difference (if they don’t, the company has a flawed recruitment process anyway so perhaps we should reconsider the company…). It’s also much, much harder to get honours here. You need at least a 3.75 GPA to get the LOWEST honours (which, converting crudely to a 5.0 CAP scale that NUS uses, is about a 4.68/5). For NUS, you only need a 3.2/5 to get its equivalent of the “lowest” honours. That’s a huge gap. Factor in the hard classes and intense pressure… you get the picture. </p>
<p>In short, everyone here is more or less right; Singapore unis are pretty good and better than most U.S. colleges, but the top 10 or so (at least, the top tier) of U.S. colleges beats Singapore’s unis hands down (no matter how hard the Singapore government tries to play up the calibre of those).</p>
<p>hey guys</p>
<p>Thanks for all your input about NTU vs UofO, but a few days ago UCSD accepted me!^^ It’s one of my top choices (completely unexpected though because every other UC rejected me), so I think it’s pretty confirmed that I’ll be attending UCSD, even if NTU offers me a place.</p>
<p>The UCs are broke and accepting out-of-staters at a crazy rate. You have good odds at UCLA/Berkeley for that reason.</p>
<p>^ lol i still got waitlisted UCLA. honestly i think this was an especially tough year for the UCs going going by the CC forums. some of them with damn good stats got waitlisted/rejected. the few posted stats of internationals i have read all seemed scholar material.</p>
<p>Hi im from VJC too!!! @introverted are you from there too? from the 2009 batch? hahaha</p>
<p>@ben267 no, no i wasn’t. my school’s cut off is double digits lol. probably the reason why i’m quite active on these forums. there’s little place else i can turn to for information, don’t know anybody else who applied to the states.</p>
<p>but i was 2009 batch though haha. ord lo!</p>
<p>Grats on ucla waitlist, I got flat out rejected but as a CA resident – not too surprised. I don’t bring in much $$.</p>
<p>@ introverted, its the student man, not the school, but gotta admit cc does provide a wealth of information after you sieve out the nonsense. hahaha and yeah ORD lo, so happy to be out of army lolol</p>
<p>@ben267: nice to see fellow free souls out and about here! ORD LOH! where you aiming to head ben?
@dustinthewind: i got flat out rejected too by ucla too! and im paying international… so im hoping you’re right for ucb! haha.</p>
<p>@nickoo got into ucla and michigan, waiting for the damned berkeley portal to open up so that i can check my damn result, i woke up at 430 and now im angry =/</p>
<p>^ I remember I tried doing that and gave up in the end, haha. They don’t specify a time, and it usually drags on for a couple of hours when the site gets down, etc etc. ):</p>
<p>^^ 
430? i just woke up 
so did you get it?</p>
<p>aaand i got rejected. :(</p>
<p>terrible week, waitlisted UCLA, rejected UCB. UCL in the UK rejected me too.</p>
<p>so… UIUC, UT-austin or UCSD?</p>
<p>@nickoo where are you headed!</p>
<p>I’m sorry to hear that ): Did you get into the honors program at UIUC? One of my friends did, and it was pretty good I think! You should go there. But UCSD has a nice campus/is in a nice city. Don’t know much about Austin.</p>
<p>All the best (: (:</p>
<p>@Eloriel yup i did! i didn’t know what it was at first since it said “james scholars program” lol. i thought it was a scholarship of sorts haha. i’m having a hard time deciding between all three truthfully. UIUC and Austin seem like great schools, but i’ve always wanted to go to california.</p>
<p>thank you (＾▽＾)</p>
<p>That’s the one! Haha. Did UCSD offer you anything? I feel that UIUC is more recognised in Singapore than UCSD, though. Perhaps take summer classes at Berkeley? You’ll still get the California experience at a relatively inexpensive price! And the east coast isn’t too bad either.</p>