Seven ways NTU can change your life
by Derek Rodriguez
1. LEARN LIKE A PRO
Unshackle yourself from the boundaries of traditional classrooms with virtual and augmented technology, or even an omnidirectional treadmill that lets you explore virtual environments.
As a student of the digital age, you’d appreciate being able to learn at your own pace. Go online with your laptops and tablets – such as the school-issued iPads for medical students – and pore through lectures and course content anywhere and anytime you want. Then thrash out ideas in groups in flipped classrooms – a great way to make friends too. Some of your lessons might incorporate virtual and augmented reality technology in smart classrooms. If you live in a hall, you can sign up for the many Residential Education programmes at your doorstep, where you can pick up real-life skills like cooking, yoga and gardening.
2. START TO GROW YOUR INDUSTRY NETWORK
Here’s a cool prospect for you. You’ll be directly mentored by industry insiders through guest lectures and research projects. The likes of Dyson, Rolls-Royce and Alibaba have set up labs here and are eager to tap your creative mind. Here’s where you start building your career network too. NTU has over 200 industry collaborators, so you’ll be rubbing shoulders with accomplished C-suite executives in class and perhaps over lunch. Work-study programmes are also an option. Looking to join Google, Shopee or Facebook, anyone?
Design and develop products of the future under the mentorship of engineers from leading companies like Dyson.
3. DIVE INTO RESEARCH AND BE ON TO THE NEXT BIG THING
Fast-track your career in research here.
Do you dream of creating vaccines for infectious diseases or transforming the fabric of the materials world? You need to get a foot in the industry first – unless you’re in NTU. From your freshman year, there will be plenty of avenues for you to immerse yourself in research that leaves an impact around the world, including the URECA programme where you join faculty-led research teams and earn a stipend in the process.
4. MAKE SMART MOVES AT THE WORLD’S TOP YOUNG UNIVERSITY
Ranked the world’s best young university by Quacquarelli Symonds since 2014, NTU is the home of invention. It won’t take long to get a glimpse into the future, with the NTU Smart Campus acting as a testbed for futuristic urban tech like self-driving food delivery robots and autonomous electric buses. Here, innovation is everywhere – even in your halls. Makers’ labs, garages or design studios in your residential block give you the space and tools you need to turn concept to prototype. If you have a sound idea, you’ll even receive seed money to develop and test it out.
5. GO GLOBAL
Follow the footsteps of alumni who built careers around the world after a rewarding global student experience. Go overseas for an internship, an exchange programme, a community project or a field trip, or take an entrepreneurship course that puts you in a tech startup in an innovation hotspot in Asia, Europe or North America. Students on the Renaissance Engineering Programme, University Scholars Programme and CN Yang Scholars Programme get overseas exposure as a core part of their curriculum. And don’t hesitate to pad your CV by flying the NTU flag at international competitions.
As a graduate of the world’s top young university, you’ll hold a degree of high value wherever you are.
6. GET YOUR DREAM JOB AND PAY
Alongside teammates from different disciplines and cultural and ethnic backgrounds, you’ll cover topics like digital literacy, communication and inquiry, ethics and global challenges as part of the common interdisciplinary core curriculum.
It pays to be an NTU grad. Your interdisciplinary education and cross-disciplinary qualifications give you an edge in exciting jobs, including those that don’t yet exist. With help in career planning from their freshmen year, more than nine in 10 new grads secure jobs within six months of graduating. The latest graduate employment survey also shows that new grads earned more than previous cohorts, despite the pandemic, with alumni from Business & Computing, Medicine, Computer Science, Engineering & Economics, and Accountancy & Business among the highest paid.
7. EXPERIENCE ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST BEAUTIFUL CAMPUSES
NTU leads in both beauty and brains, having also made several lists of the world’s most photogenic universities. It’s hard to disagree. Find a sanctuary from stress as you take a waterfront stroll. From your hall room, look out to greenery or a graceful water feature and colourful wildlife. Buildings like The Hive and The Arc, as well as the grass-roofed School of Art, Design & Media, make frequent appearances on Instagram and YouTube, though only students like you get the benefit of learning in their smart classrooms.
This story was published in the Mar-May 2022 issue of HEY!. To read it and other stories from this issue in print, click here.
