TravelReport

NationalUniversityofSingapore

SpringSemester2017(UG)484040&422497

NUSBusinessSchool

Preparing for the exchange After the application was accepted by Aalto and they made their nominations, NUS contacted us late August. Remember, the time for contact can vary from year to year so don’t panic if you do not hear from them in August. You should also keep an eye on your junk mail, just in case. Also, it’s good to create a group of your fellow Finnish students going to NUS to share information and ask questions. There are a number of formalities to be completed in the application process but you’ll be provided with detailed instructions on how to proceed. Read them carefully. The most important thing is to pay attention to the deadlines and not to miss them. The entire application process is done electronically so you are not required to send anything by physical mail to NUS. Just print out every receipt and also store them to your phone/cloud for easy access. There are two key things in the process: Application for students pass and for accommodation. Student pass is your visa and gives you the permission to stay in Singapore for the duration of your studies. You are required to submit a lot of personal information for this such as passport photo, date of birth, contact info, religion and passport number etc. Remember to check that your passport is valid at least six months after the semester ends. After completing the application, print it out. When you arrive to Singapore, you’re given a temporary social visit pass before you complete the student pass formalities during your first week (ICA organizes on-campus day where you can do this). After this, you’re required to stay in Singapore for two weeks before you can travel outside. The second important issue to solve is the accommodation. You’re invited to apply for housing where you can indicate your preferred choices, usually people try to get to UTown and Prince George’s Park. Try to get into UTown and submit your housing application as soon as it opens. If you can’t get there, you can try to get transferred there when you arrive to Singapore. Completing both key steps of your application includes some miscellaneous fees totalling about 300 SGD. Other things to handle includes getting the appropriate vaccines. You can contact YTHS for their recommendations and also check for yourself (formin.fi). Singapore is very clean city but you’re most probably going to travel around so you can also check what vaccinations are recommended to take in those countries. Also before the trip, make sure you have an insurance to cover not only your stay in Singapore but one that covers your travels as well. The two most popular flight routes to Singapore from Helsinki are a direct flight (Finnair) or a connecting flight (HEL-DOH-SIN). Direct is more expensive but it decreases your travelling time. The Doha-Singapore route is operated by Qatar airlines, which is one of the best airlines in the world and based on friend feedback, it’s recommended if you don’t mind the longer travelling time. After you arrive to Singapore, it’s wise to get a sim-card (either Singtel or StarHub) and the EZ-Link card for MRT (mass rapid transportation, i.e. local subway) travel already at the airport. However, as the NUS campus is somewhat far away from the Changi airport, it’s best to take a taxi or Uber to the campus to avoid the hassle with your luggage using the public transport.

Downtown

Beginning your studies The spring semester of 2017 began on the 9th of January and ended on the 6th of May (17 weeks). But it can also end earlier if you don’t have any final exams as there are reading week + two examination weeks. What’s also notable in the schedule is the timing of the recess week which was from 18th of February to 26th of February in 2017. It’s a perfect window of opportunity to do a longer trip with your friends, either from exchange or visiting friends from Finland. We would advise to organise the possible family visiting time to another week as this is one trip you don’t want to miss with your friends! We also recommend arriving well before the semester starts, even one to two weeks to get settled down and adjusting to everything. Leaving only a couple of days before the registering can create stressful situations if your flight gets cancelled, which actually happened to three people going to NUS from our school. You have to choose the courses which you want to take pretty early prior your arrival to Singapore. It might be somewhat stressful process as you don’t know the lecture times of any courses offered so we would suggest trying to roll on courses that interest you, at least to some extent which will make your studying a lot more pleasurable. The business courses at NUS are highly popular so it’s likely that you won’t get all the courses you want but do not panic. There is an add/drop exercise where you can add courses you don’t want and add ones that fit your schedule better. The majority of us managed to build a schedule with two or three days of school a week. Doing so creates you a nice window to travel during your leisure time. There is also plenty of business as well as other courses, such as social science, available and you don’t have to follow a certain program. You only

need to approve the courses you would like to take at the Aalto exchange office and should you make any changes after the add-drop exercise, you can notify them. The courses we took were all in English and we didn’t even explore if there were courses offered in other languages.

Coursework Below, there’s a quick introduction to the modules we took. We encourage you to take other courses than what you normally take back in Aalto. It will give you a fresh perspective and a nice change for one semester. All the modules are 4 modular credits (transferred as 6 ECTS to Aalto), so you are required to take a total of five modules to get the 30 credits for your bachelor’s degree. The course syllabuses are somewhat messy for some courses and it’s hard to know what actually needs to be done and when. We strongly encourage you to do an excel spreadsheet or mark all your deadlines on calendar, which will make your life a lot easier throughout the semester. FIN3118 Financial Risk Management, Dr. Jin-Chuan Duan This course provided some new angles and revised some topics already learned on Aalto finance modules. The professor is a true expert on his area and very dedicated to his job. We think the course could have provided more practical tools on how to manage financial risk but as a whole, it was a good course although not the easiest one. One negative thing was that the tests were both organised on Saturday. Grading Two tests: 60% Term Paper: 20% Presentation: 20% Difficulty: 3/5 Workload: 2/5 Final exam: No DSC3202 Purchasing and Materials Management, Keith B. Carter Mr. Carter is a senior visiting fellow at NUS and his presentation skills were just wow. He speaks very clearly and is effective getting the message through. During the course, we played an interesting virtual game where our task was to optimize the operations of a company all the way from raw material suppliers to sales. Grading Individual assignments: 20% Group assignments: 20% Midterm: 30% Final group project: 30%

Difficulty: 2/5 Workload: 2/5 Final exam: No MNO3301 Organizational Behavior, Dr. Chia Ho Beng Dr. “Harmony & Bright”, an ex-army captain is somewhat chaotic personality considering his background. Nevertheless, this course gives a finance student a fresh perspective and the lectures were definitely different compared to any other class. There were lots of activities that were fun and we didn’t have to sit still so much. Grading Individual journals: 50% Team presentations: 20% Team reflections: 20% Participation: 10% Difficulty: 1/5 Workload: 3/5 Final exam: No MNO3322 Negotiations and Bargaining, Dr. Chia Ho Beng This course provided some good basics to keep in mind with negotiations. It could have been a lot more concise course but instead we did role play with imaginary cases and negotiation situations and it was really hard to get into the “zone” as it was so different. We also practised our skills to resolve a real conflict outside class. Grading Individual journals: 35% Group project: 30% Participation: 20% MCQ: 15% Difficulty: 1/5 Workload: 2/5 Final exam: No MNO2007 Leadership and Ethics, Dr. Irene De Pater This course required preparation before each class with pre-readings and one pagers to be returned before each class. It didn’t take too much time but you just had to plan in advance. Irene is an ex-

psychologist and this class was very interactive. We had many nice discussions on various topics and experienced the complexity as well as challenges of ethics in business. Grading Team presentation 30% Interview: 20% Test: 30% Participation: 20% Difficulty: 1/5 Workload: 3/5 Final exam: No

Lightshow at Marina Bay

Life in Singapore Singapore is a very clean, safe city with a lot of expatriates living there from western countries. Everything works there pretty much like a charm and it’s easy to adjust to the life there. The humidity you experience after you’ve landed and exit the plane is overwhelming. It’s always warm, even during

the night so you don’t really have to worry about what to put on as long as you don’t put too much clothes or you’re going to sweat a lot. Actually, you’re going to sweat anyway but luckily there’s air conditioning in the malls, mrt, school etc. Singapore experiences a lot of thunderstorms but usually they pass quite quickly and you don’t really have to worry about it as you can move in the campus on covered pathways not getting wet. The mrt makes it also easy and very affordable to travel around Singapore only downside being that it stops running around midnight. After that, your best bet is either uber or a cab, which both are a lot cheaper than in Finland. Alcohol is rather expensive in the bars and clubs. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go out because you really should as there are excellent clubs with unique views that you just can’t find in Finland or in Europe either. In contrast to the expensive side of Singapore, the hawker centres are very cheap and you can eat at those for 3-6 SGD. This means it’s basically pointless to cook yourself, it will just cost you more and take time you can put into a lot better use. The food in restaurants costs about the same or a bit more compared Finland. There are some must see places in Singapore such as the Gardens by the Bay, Zoo and Sentosa and many others worth visiting but it’s quite quickly explored as it’s a quite densely populated country of about 5 million people.

Housing At NUS campus, exchangers for Aalto have usually been placed in either at the UTown Residences or at PGPR (Prince George’s Park Residences). Everyone wants to UTown but only a few have been getting there lately. UTown has better facilities and hawker centres that are open later as well as Subway and Starbucks. However, the rooms are also more expensive there. Advantages of the PGPR are that it’s closer to the Kent Ridge MRT stop and to the business school. The type C room in PGPR was about 2 000 SGD for the whole semester which was a bargain. Considering the amount of travelling, it wasn’t too bad although sleeping without ac and with a loud fan was really hard to cope with. You’d better buy some earplugs if you end up there. There are some books you can refer to on courses but generally they are not required, as is the case in our courses back home. There are no additional school fees you have to pay after the application, except for a small management fee (about 15 SGD) when registering at your dormitory. Singaporeans are generally nice and friendly and the students work really hard. They study in the library late in the night but they work less efficiently than us. Despite that, they’re social and we can recommend getting to know them during school projects or outside. Getting to know other students from all over the world is one of the key benefits of your exchange. You get to meet a lot of cool people from different cultures and backgrounds, travel with them and have the time of your life. But you have to be awake in the beginning and attend events, be brave and talk with people (it might be hard for us Finns before we’ve had five beers but just try it). People quickly form relations and start to hang out in certain groups so you want to get those travel buddies quick!

Finances In Singapore and also generally in Asia, they use a lot more than we’re used to back in Finland. You should have at least a couple hundred euros with you that you can change to SGD at the airport.

You can also open a bank account later on if you want to avoid the currency exchange fees banks take or the atm withdrawal fees (which are the most expensive way to get money). To avoid this, you can also bring a lot of cash with you but of course there are always risks carrying a lot of cash with you. We would advise you to have a minimum of two cards (getting a credit card is highly encouraged if you don’t have one already) with you in case one of them gets lost/stolen or doesn’t work. As for budget wise, expect to be spending about 10 000-15 000 euros but this can greatly vary depending on your lifestyle and how much you travel. It might sound a lot of money but remember to utilize all the scholarships that Aalto and our beloved KY Foundation are offering. Also, the increased student loan while studying abroad helps as well as the monthly KELA payments (expect to shock especially non-Scandinavians about how much we get support).

Final comments Going for exchange studies is truly an unique opportunity in your life, take advantage of it. The National University of Singapore was once again chosen as the best university of Asia and it’s also one of the best in the world, which is already a good reason to go there. It attracts students from all over the world and you get to meet a lot of people that you can learn from and that you can also teach. The teaching is very different compared to Aalto and this challenges yourself outside your comfort zone, which facilitates your learning as a person and the ability to handle different situations. If that doesn’t convince you, Singapore is the perfect “home base” allowing you to travel around south-east Asia experiencing the great variety of the surrounding countries that are very different from Singapore. It really is an eye-opening experience, both culturally and personally. What you learn on exchange is a lot more than those accounting rules. The best thing about exchange is that you learn more about yourself, get to practise speaking English and you’ll experience the sense of freedom and independence that are something we don’t believe you can experience back home. We can 100% recommend Singapore for your exchange destination as it might be difficult to explore south-east Asia to this extent and in this unique setting.