As its name suggests, GES1028/GESS1020 covers various aspects of Singapore Society, including areas of:
Politics, Government and Civil Society
Stratification and Social Class
“Race” and Ethnicity
Gender
Sexuality
Education
Deviance and Crime
Religion
Media
ngl, i feel like i was having some deja-vu moments because some of the content covered were really similar to GES1041 Everyday Ethics in Singapore, bc I was just relearning the same concepts etc, meritocracy, race & ethnicity.
Grading components are as follows:
Tutorial Participation (20%)
I think I was really fortunate to have a really nice tutor and also a class mixed with various exchange students so it was kinda interesting to hear from various perspectives/insights outside of Singapore (even though its technically a mod that focuses on SG… haha) There wasn’t really a system where we have to raise hand to cp, and pretty much everyone were involved in small group discussions~ I wouldn’t say this was a very stressful component, but if you are taking this module, it’s best if you do some readings in preparation for the tutorial classes so you would have something to value add to the discussion.
2. Group Presentation (30%)
Starting from the second tutorial onwards, each group will prepare a 20-mins presentation based on one of the tutorial questions. Personally, I feel like this component was rather chill too, and hahahaa like I mentioned above, I already took GES1041, so some of the tutorial questions were pretty much the same/I have already gone through the readings LOL.
But aiya, I feel like this component was also very chill, there wasn’t really a strict marking guide, and we are free to explore or even go beyond the tutorial questions (with permission from the TA/prof). For my tutorial group, there wasn’t really a Q&A session too, and everyone didn’t bother to memorise their script and just read from their phones, so tbh if you are taking this module, you don’t really have to stress about this
3. Midterm Essay (25%):
I believe this was assigned before recess week, and we had around 1 month to complete the mid-term essay. This was open book, and we were basically told to reflect upon a news article. For my batch, the article was related to heteronormativity and the follow up question was regarding whether Singapore is a heteronormative society.
Tbh, there wasn’t actually a cohort feedback for the mid-term essay, but i did receive my mid-term grade and did pretty well hahaah, so maybe I can provide some tips:
properly defining the terms in your essay. When doing the essay, assume that whoever is reading it has zero clue about the terms, such as heteronormativity, hegemonic masculinity, etc. Make sure that you define and cite relevant sources when explaining such terms in your essay.
ensure that you cite sufficient relevant sources and go beyond the news article. I like to use Google Scholar or NUS Libraries to find other scholarly articles that can provide me with greater insights into the topic. I think this also enhances the credibility of your essay.
Also, a mistake that I made when writing the essay was being too personal: etc, including words like “I posit” or “I reckon that Singapore is a heteronormative society etc.” It’s best to exclude such pronouns in your essay.
4. Final Essay (25%):
This was also of similar format to the mid-term essay. Though I was expecting the topic to be more relevant to Weeks 7 onwards, I was quite surprised to see that the final essay question was in fact the same as the tutorial question in Week 1. The topic and news article was on the idea of gestural politics. I did not receive any feedback/grade for the final essay (they are probably still marking the paper tbh), but the tips for mid-term essays still applies.
Overall:
Tbh, i feel like i don’t really have a lot of impression about this module? I feel like I was just cruising along week by week. Also because this module was online, and we were told that the lecture will be recorded, I got lazier and lazier every week and ended up skipping the lectures entirely. I feel like after Week 8 I stopped watching the lecture videos too (lmaoooooo, don’t be like me). At the start of the semester, I was also actively taking down notes on the readings, but towards the end of the semester, I didn’t even download/read the readings anymore :p . It also helped that there is no actual mid-terms/finals, cuz the assessments were open book, and I had like an entire month to do the essay so I didn’t really have to study for it too lol.
I think I got pretty sian because I really felt like I was learning the same thing as GES1041, but disclaimer ah, this is just my personal experience!! Maybe it would have been different if I had taken this module first opps. But regardless, because I took a similar module before, I feel like the content/tutorial questions were ezpz, I don’t think I struggled a lot in this module?? The only thing I struggled with is procrastination because I was lazy to watch the videos and get started on the essays??? (But lmaooo this feels like an universal experience xD) I will actually recommend this module due to how chill it was, but pls don’t expect too much from it, cuz the content can get really dry and sometimes boring.. But tbh, i feel like thats all GES modules lol (oof dont come after me…) If you are just looking for some modules to clear your UEs (like me), or if you just want a chill final year/sem (also me xD), you can consider taking this module!!
This was another random GE module that I took to clear my UEs. As its title suggests, we learn about Chinese music from PRC, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore in the different eras. I would like to caution that we do not just learn about modern or current music (etc mandopop), we get to explore (and hear) different musical styles, such as cantopop, rock music etc. Therefore, this is a PSA that its not just listening to Jay Chou’s songs (though some of his songs were indeed explored in 1 or 2 lectures/tutorials), so if that’s your only intention to take this module, maybe this isn’t right for you!!
Anyway, we also got to explore songs in movies (such as 我的少女时代), which will be relevant in the group project as elaborated below. The later part of the lectures and tutorials (near Week 10 onwards) focus on Chinese poems (also from different dynasties).
Some degree of Chinese proficiency will be good but tbh not very necessary as most song lyrics shown are translated into English.
The grading components are as follows:
Individual Essay (45%)
This essay was actually due after recess week, and we were expected to write a ~1200 word topic on one of the popular Chinese singers and one of the songs explored in the lecture. This includes:
Zhou Xuan
Teresa Teng
Cui Jian
Sam Hui
Jay Chou
tbh, all of us just received the grading feedback for our essay, so perhaps i shall focus more on the tips to score well for this component.
Firstly, make sure you have an adequate and balanced coverage of the required content. For my batch, there were two parts to the essay, (a) significance of the chosen singer, and (b) one song discussed by that singer. It’s not sufficient to gloss over the singer’s influence in just a couple of lines.
Secondly, APA citation is important. I was absolutely roasted for my atrocious reference list (oof), because i did not know that there are different APA citation styles for different publications (apparently citing style for journal papers are different for theses or books or videos) And yeah… marks are deducted for lousy citations (sigh)
Thirdly, credibilityof sources used in essay. I feel like this was already repeatedly emphasized by the prof, but apparently some students still rely on sketchy blogposts, forums, or even links from wikipedia when doing the essay (pls do not do this!!) One tip I have is to just find academic papers from NUS Libraries, or Google Scholar. Theres actually a lot of free scholarly papers on the internet!
Fourthly, having a good understanding of the song chosen. The lyrics of the song chosen might be different from what is portrayed in the MV.
Fifthly, just a disclaimer ah, this is my own personal opinion, but if you take this module with the intention of getting an A, pls don’t choose Jay Chou as the topic AHAHA. I MEAN, im not saying that you cant score well if you choose to write about him, but majority of the cohort chose to write about him and his songs, and theres not much you really can do to stand out?? But this is just my opinion ah, if you are a super megafan of Jay Chou and want to write about your idol then go ahead lor but just try to be more unique?
2. Group Project (35%)
This was randomly assigned in your tutorial groups. Basically, we choose one movie to analyze and identify the songs used in the movie (whether they are diegetic or non-diegetic).
I also just received the feedback for this, so let me also focus on the tips to score well for this component.
Firstly, also make sure that you have a balanced coverage of the required content in the project. You need to give a short brief of the movie chosen, and also explore the songs in the movie itself. Most groups typically chose 2-3 songs and clips in the presentation.
Secondly, there is strict timekeeping, so make sure that you do not exceed the 15 mins allocated per group. Also, this presentation was done online, so try to make sure there’s no technical difficulty, or your presentation slides/videos don’t lag.
Thirdly, this is also my opinion ah, if you want to get A, I think its better to choose movies that are more niche? There were so many groups in my tutorial that chose ‘You Are the Apple of My Eye‘, and ngl, my groupmates and I were kinda sian hearing the same presentation and songs over and over again AHAHA.
3. Tutorial Attendance/Participation (20%)
I think this is pretty self explanatory bah, just show up for tutorial, raise hand and answer questions. We get to prepare the questions before tutorials, so its just a matter of ‘fastest hands’, because some people in my tutorial group were really onz. The tutor was really strict with recording what we said so if you give some lousy/ fluff answers, you might get called out LOL. Tbh, I think if you take this module, you can pretty much get by without reading any of the course readings because most of the tutorial questions are less about the theory, but more about your opinion about certain topics (etc your favourite poem explored in lecture?)
Overall opinion:
Tbh, I kinda enjoyed this module?? I think a lot of people may disagree with me HAAHHAHA but I personally enjoyed listening to all the different songs in the different eras and different countries. Yeah they are not really conventional songs that you hear nowadays, but i think its pretty cool to hear how the songs have changed over the years. Ok la, maybe i just share some of the songs that we explored throughout the semester, and you can decide whether you want to take this module!! 😀 Note that the list is not exhaustive, i only picked some of my favourites hehe xD
So yeah, as you can see above, its not just listening to Jay Chou’s songs, but we get to explore different variety of songs from different singers!
I feel like overall, this module is pretty chill too cuz theres no exam, and you don’t really have to take down notes because they are not really tested? And honestly, I kinda stopped watching the lecture after Week 11, because tutorials are pretty much over. While there are significant number of readings in this module, like i mentioned above, I personally got by without really reading any of them (ahahahahahah sorry i was lazy).
I would totally recommend this module, but i wouldn’t say that this is my favourite GEH module (heheh sorry BUT I STILL ENJOYED THIS MODULE OKAY). I think I can actually be in the position to say this cuz i actually took a total of 3 GEH modules (the other 2 being GEH1074 Luck and GEH1056 Cultural Diversity in Contemporary World). But I still think this module (GEH1006) is still pretty good if you are genuinely interested to learn more about chinese music (beyond just mandopop and jay chou), and I also think its pretty easy to score well as long as you put in the effort in both your project and individual report!!
And yeah as usual, pls don’t ask me for notes cuz i won’t be entertaining such comments 😀 lemme know if you have any questions, and i can try to answer 😀 (no promises tho)
This is a random 4k module that i took with my friend! fun fact, this was my first time taking a mno module since mno2705 😀 ngl, i was pretty afraid bc ive mostly been studying economics and marketing, which is totally not linked to any hr concepts or theories lol. nevertheless, this was the only 4k module that caught my eye, and tbh as a last year last sem student, i thought it will also be good to know/ have some tips about some hr practices since i’ll be going for interviews/ applying for jobs throughout the sem.
but haha i ended up getting abit siked because it was mostly learning about the theories behind the different selection decisions, validity and reliability rather than tips hahaa. Nevertheless i still think its pretty useful, the prof is pretty nice, and the class is really chill so i don’t really have any regrets taking this class (other than having to wake up every week for an 830am class💀) but i shall elaborate this at the end
I think this was the easiest component to score, as this was entirely marked based on your individual forum contributions. (*cheers from introverts*🎉) Every week, there will be a case study (which will be presented by different groups). Students who are not presenting can post up to 5 contribution posts by answering the questions in the case study. Your posts may be credited by the presenting team/used during their presentation. 1 post = 1 mark, so technically, we could all clear this within the first four weeks to get the full marks for this component!! I personally think this was really easy to score cuz we just had to read the case study and answer the questions, so i wasn’t surprised to see that pretty much almost everyone scored full marks for this component.
btw haha, if you are taking this module, pls adhere to the dateline for forum contribution strictly, there was one student who was late by like 3mins and it was considered ‘late’ 💀. ngl i felt really so bad for him/her… but welp at least can still catch up in the later weeks
2. Group Study & Presentation (20%)
as mentioned above, there will be a group that will be presenting on a particular topic for the later half of the class (in the last hour). this was randomly assigned, and we could form our own groups! the case studies were extracted from news articles/websites online, and it basically covers the hr concepts for a particular company for that particular week. i think my only complaint was that the questions every week differs?? Kinda unfair how some groups only had to do 2-3 questions, but some other groups had to cover 5-6 questions… And there were only 15 mins to present (ok tbf he didn’t really keep track of the time), but its still a mad rush cuz we had to tackle all questions, and still had to keep the presentation interesting (with skits, audience engagement etc).
Anyway, I was one of the last few groups to present, so we kinda procrastinated until like one week before the presentation to start doing the slides LOL. Luckily there wasn’t a report due, and tbh, the questions were like pretty straightforward so its easy to tackle, but i wouldn’t recommend leaving it til so last minute (tbh my groupmates were really chill, i was like the only one stressing out.💀)
3. Individual MCQ Test (30%)
This was conducted in Week 12, and we only had to come to school to take an one-hour closed book test. The topics tested included content covered from Weeks 1 – 10 and was in MCQ format.
I actually think the MCQ questions were pretty tricky? I went in and did the entire paper so confidently… but sike i still ended up getting a few questions wrong. p.s. the median was around 21/22 marks out of 30 marks!
if you are taking this module, just skip the slides and read the transcripts!! A lot of minor details in the transcripts were tested, and some of them are not even covered in the slides. i think if you have been following the lectures consistently and reading the notes consistently, you should be able to do well for this component.
4. Individual Project (Application of Concepts & Practices)
This was conducted in Week 13 (which i like to call the hell week 🔥 cuz i have literally so many assignments and presentation due that week 🥲). Nevertheless, we were given one week to complete the case study, which is of similar format to our group study cases.
I think this was a good reflection of whatever we have learnt in the past semester, cuz we were expected to list any 6 relevant concepts and link it into the case study. But aiya, i think this component is also quite easy to score as long as you have been actively contributing in the class forum and you know your content! (but ok la tbh even if you don’t know, you can always refer to the transcripts since its open book)
Overall
fun fact, this was the only 4k module i took this semester (the rest were 1k modules), but this was like the chillest (legit) module out of all. I feel like i was stressing out more for my 1k module than for this mno mod??
Tbh, the only thing i don’t like about this class was that its in the morning (but thats a me problem🤡), and i honestly felt really sleepy in his class (again… it’s my problem, i blame my revenge bedtime procrastination, i always attend this class with only 3 hours of sleep AHAAHAHA 🥲). I think it helps that there wasn’t class participation in class, so i was able to feel more relaxed and less stressed. Also, because theres no actual class attendance (well, we did have to sign the attendance sheet but it does not constitute any of our marks), its funny to see how the number of ppl in class decreases every week (but those fakers ask their friends to sign their attendance i see u 😤). I would say that as a marketing student, this class wasn’t as intimidating as i initially thought, tbh its feel very beginner-friendly and the prof is really friendly and nice! However, i have to caution that the content can be a little bit boring and dry, tbh im not really sure if it ended up helping my job search (i don’t think it did actually HAHAHA) but i would totally recommend this module if you are looking for something more chill!
I want to start off by saying that this module is pretty unique. Rather than learning about concepts or theories, we get different speakers from various backgrounds who share about their experiences bridging East and West.
Grading components are as follows:
Lecture Reflection Papers (x4) – (40%)
This is a short 1-page reflection paper, where you basically reflect whatever you have learnt from the guest speakers, readings or from your own personal experiences. To make sure that you attend every single lecture, the prof/TA will not announce the exact weeks where you are expected to write the reflection paper. We will only get the instructions and question near the end of the lecture. For my batch, we had to do x4 reflection papers, and the question is more or less related to the speakers’ topics.
Personally, I think this is a really easy component to score as long as you pay close attention to the lecture, actively take down notes, and have also do your readings before the class. One tip to score well is really to make sure that your reflection covers the content from the lectures, readings and your personal experiences. Just writing whatever you have learnt from the lecture is not enough, and this was re-iterated numerous times by the prof/TA.
My thoughts:
Tbh, writing the reflection papers always felt very rushed, bc we were only given 15-20 mins to write out a 1-page reflection essay before we had to submit on CANVAS. It wasn’t like we could actually write the reflection in advance, because its not just a ‘reflect what you have learnt from this lecturer’, but more like a ‘from what you have learnt, how do you apply this in your lives/Singapore?’ or like ‘from what you have learnt, how are the east and west different in ____?’
And also, if you plan to take this module, at least make sure that youhave some level of chinese proficiency. There were some speakers that spoke entirely in chinese. I mean, ofc there are accompanying english words on the slides, but i feel like those who dk chinese will definitely miss out the specific content. But i have to say there are a lot of exchange students who took this module (and they do know some basic chinese!)
2. Group presentation in tutorials (20%)
For all tutorial sessions, there will be a group presentation on different topics. Tbh… I always feel very sian about this bc a lot of work has to be done before class in terms of field research and slides.
This was the tutorial topics for my batch:
Tutorial 1: Chinese New Year Awkward Questions
Tutorial 2: What’s in a Name?
Tutorial 3: Linguistic Landscape of Hawker Centers
Tutorial 4: Movie posters East and West
Tutorial 5: Revision
My thoughts:
I feel like… firstly, the tutorial topics has nothing in common with the lectures. But ok to be fair, it still does show the bridging of east and west in various ways, so maybe the intention was for us to explore beyond the content covered in lecture and focus more on Singapore so that it’s more applicable for us.
Secondly… as i said above, I feel like its very sian to do presentations for every tutorial. The sheer amount of research and data collection required for each tutorial also takes up a lot of time, especially the hawker centre tutorial. Imagine if you are super suay and get allocated with a hawker centre with like 60 stores.. damn sian eh need write down all the food menu, signboards, store names… And you literally have to go down to that hawker centre to take pictures of the store and the menu because you need to paste those pictures in the excel sheet too... Afterwards you need to analyze the type of languages they use… and if the menu is in chinese then you also have to type the exact (traditional/simplified chinese) words in the excel too.. I mean, ya la technically you can split the work among your team, but then its still a lot of work to do 😦 felt like i was just spending my recess week visiting the hawker centre, typing in the excel, afterwards still need to meet my team to discuss the overall data and make slides shag eh
Thirdly, lmao idk if its just my tutorial group in general, but its quite discouraging to always hear more ‘areas of improvements’ than compliments for our presentations. Like its already so hard to collect and analyze data (tbh its legit very difficult to find group trends bc sometimes the data are just very different from each other)… And no matter how much we improve the slides in the following weeks, there are always more areas of improvements…even the small small things matter eh, like content page, slides number, even the type of visual charts you use 🤡
3. Individual tutorial contributions (15%)
My thoughts:
Honestly, the only time we got to class part was in the first tutorial, where we raise hand to provide feedback to the presenting group. Subsequently, in the other tutorial sessions, we weren’t even given the time to raise hand because there was simply no time and some ppl had to leave for their other classes and the TA didn’t want to let the tutorial drag beyond 1.5 hours. So i have absolutely no clue if this 15% is just based on that one tutorial class??? cuz there’s no qna for presentation too…
4. Final Quiz (25%)
This is basically 2 reflections paper, and combines topics from various speakers. I can’t remember the exact questions (and the mod alr disappeared from my canvas alr so opps), but i do notice that the topics tested were mainly lectures where we didn’t have to write the reflection papers. The format is also the same as reflection papers, just that there is no limit, though theres only so much you can write in just an hour. Similarly, to score well, we had to incorporate examples and reflections from the lectures + readings + own reflections.
My thoughts:
i think managing your time during the final quiz is very important. For my batch, there were two questions, but within each question, 3 topics were covered, and we had to give 3 examples for each of those 3 topics. The examples also have to come minimally from 1 lecture example and 1 reading example, and the last example can be your personal experience/lecture/reading. Luckily, we were able to do the test open book, so I think if you take down notes for every lectures+ readings, you should do fine..
Overall thoughts:
Hmmmm.. i honestly have a love/hate relationship with this module. I do think that this module is pretty interesting and unique, like where else can we get the opportunity to hear from many distinguished guests from various backgrounds?? but at the same time, i don’t necessarily enjoy the large amount of preparation required for all the tutorial sessions.
And tbh… i did read some of the reviews left by ex/current students on the nusmod page, and yea la i do feel like for some lectures, they do lowkey feel like promotion sessions, cuz some speakers end up promoting their books and courses… But imo, I don’t necessarily think that its that bad leh, like those books and courses do tell you more about bridging east and west, so if you interested to find out more, you can buy la but if you are not interested then ok lor not like they forcing u to buy???
I feel like we should be more appreciative that we get to hear from so many different speakers, and how the intersection between east and west can be seen in various fields such architecture, medicine, social media etc, so i also don’t see anything wrong with the prof asking us to write appreciation letters to guest lecturers and encouraging us to show our gratitude. i mean, i rather attend such classes bc it feels more relatable and personal, as compared to like other classes where we just learn about definitions and how to apply formulas?? but disclaimer, this is just my personal opinion la! if you don’t find value in such classes, then u r probably better off clearing your GE pillar with other modules rather than wasting your time in a module that you dislike.
anyway i should probably stop before i continue rambling on and on…. but if you have any other questions, i’ll try my best to answer them as long as they are not requests for notes!! ok byebye! 😀
Took this tgt with MKT4720 – Product Experience Management, thinking that there will be some degree of overlapping, but there actually isn’t, bc this module explores more on the ‘Customer’ (duhhh not the ‘Product’). Content (and concepts) taught in MKT4720 and this module (MKT4723) is totally different. In fact, MKT4723’s content was more similar to Services Marketing (MKT3711), prob because this was taught by the same Prof (etc, things like Atmospherics model were already taught in MKT3711, but its a nice recap in this mod). This prof is still as chill as I remembered and I actually really liked her teaching style because she likes to teach her classes by applying concepts to real-life examples (such as DisneyLand, Sephora etc) so it can be quite relevant.
Grading components are as explored:
Individual Assignment 1A (25%)
This was due in Week 6. We were supposed to think from the perspective of a customer and apply the CX knowledge to a real commercial setting (for a B2C business: such as tech, fast fashion, F&B etc). There wasn’t very strict requirements on the chosen company, but we had to at least choose a company that has both online and onsite presence. Bc we had to use the same company for Assignment 1B, one should actually look at the 1B requirements so that we can easily apply the concepts and come up with recommendations later. Some concepts we were supposed to explore include topics taught in the first half of the sem:
a) Brand identity of the organization (Marketing Strategies and Branding explored in the recent 5-10 years), so one can actually do an on-site recce, or just browse through their social media/online site to make an analysis.
b) Describe our customer experience with the organization (Good to do an on-site recce, and see how the service staff interact with the customer (you). We were supposed to frame this in the 3 stages of consumption.
c) Critique organization’s CX efforts using frameworks taught in class (such as Sensory System, Value Constellation, Customer Value Framework etc)
I think this was quite simple to do, and we were only expected to write up to 1.5K words for this.
2. Individual Assignment 1B (25%)
This is a continuation of Assignment 1A, just that we were supposed to apply concepts taught in the later half of the semester, and apply them to the same organization explored in 1A.
In Part 1B, we were now expected to act as the CX manager of the chosen organization, and in that perspective, analyze the organization’s CX effort and submit a short report (2k words). We were expected to explore:
a) The physical store (Through the creation of a service blueprint, which I did on Miro) and then identify risk points and provide corresponding recommendations to better manage them.
b) Explore the physical store and critique using the Atmospheric model, , Customer Perception (in terms of cognitive, emotional, physiological and social interaction) and provide corresponding recommendations to improve the experience
c) The online platform (Explore the organization’s online presence in terms of social media, app, website) and provide recommendations through the use of technology to add value to customers.
I think 1B is harder because we had to come up with recommendations for almost all the above parts, so its better to choose a company that is more novel and unknown (and maybe not as developed), as compared to a huge organization (who is doing well physically and online) else its harder to give recommendations.
3. Group Presentation and Report (30%)
For the group project, we were supposed to act as external CX consultants and explore an organization (that one of us has worked/interned in) and examine the following areas.
a) General overview of the organization (Mission, Vision, Branding) and whether it is aligned with target audience and the CX experience.
b) Current leadership and corporate culture (Using frameworks taught in class)
c) Appraisal on people management
d) Short-term interim plan to improve immediate current position
e) Long-term plan to transition into 360 degree customer-centric organization.
Report was around 4k words, but since we were grouped in 6-7, the report can be done rather quickly. I was blessed to be in a good team for this project, and we got everything done super quickly in Week 11. Afterward, we just spent the rest of the week preparing for the slides 🙂 Presentation was done physically, and Prof didn’t really ask any questions yay
4. Class Participation (20%)
A mix of forum posts on padlet and in-class participation. Prof is quite understanding that some students may be more introverted, so she allow students to type up forum posts (yay).
Conclusion
I would totally recommend this module, bc I really liked the content and the prof was really nice. There is no exam (yay), and though theres a lot of report to be written, Prof gives us a lot of time to get them done (etc there was no classes in Week 10 and 11). I think it helped that there was a bit of overlapping content in MKT3711, so I kinda knew the concepts alr so its easy to apply them in the assignment. If you are looking for a marketing mod to take, pls take this under Prof Lilian!!
Others
Lecturer: Prof Lilian Ho
Readings: 1-3 readings a week (but I have never read any cuz it wasn’t tested opps)
I took this module to clear my extra UEs 🙂 In fact, I had already cleared all my GE pillars, so I took this module for fun! I actually heard about this module from my friend who took this module under Prof Georgiou… and I was like why does his name sound so familiar?? 🧐 turns out I had taken his GET1023 – Thinking Like An Economist module in Year 1, and I remembered enjoying it so much hehehe so I went ahead to bid for GEH1074 this semester!!
BTW, despite being a Y4 student, I had so much difficulty bidding for this mod, I failed to get into the module in Round 2 and 3, and could only get in via APPEAL :> Whoever dropped out and left that extra spot thanks so much ya haahaha.
This is a very very interesting module, in fact, one that I enjoyed the most this semester, because we got to explore how luck affects almost every area of our lives – from our name, the time and month when we are born, the place we are born in, free will and determinism, blah blah and more. In the later half of the semester, there was more emphasis on how to counter (bad) luck – etc buying insurance, migration, taxation policies, intelligent design etc.
I really recommend this module, cuz Prof Georgiou (or as we like to call him ggman) is a very engaging professor, and his content is legit very interesting. Though he still keeps his habits of randomly shouting in the lecture hall (ahhahaaha same as GET1023, to keep us all awake ig..), he frequently walks around the lecture hall, and attempts to engage us (usually by approaching the exchange students and asking them questions and getting them to share their experience LOL ).
Heres the topic that were covered every week:
Luck and Art
Luck and Evolution
Luck and circumstances at birth A (Place & Time)
Luck and circumstances at birth B (Other Chance events)
Luck and Social Mobility
Luck and Free Will
Luck and Causality
Luck and Marketplace
Harnessing Luck A (Collective Financial Part)
Harnessing Luck B (Individual Financial Part)
Harnessing Luck C (The Existential Part)
Are you lucky?
Lemme jump straight into the grading component:
Tutorial (10%)
Self-explanatory, theres a 1-hour physical tutorial every week, starting from Week 3. Basically covers the content that he taught the previous week, and theres some weekly discussion questions that you can attempt to do before class. I actually got ggman as our tutor, so our tutorial was mainly 20 mins of internal group discussions (where we were split into groups of 3, and each group takes 1 question). Afterward, we will all type our discussion answers into a consolidated shared document. Afterward, a representative from each group will go to the front of the class to present his/her answer for the question that the group was allocated.
And because this was a module on Luck, I vividly remembered going for my first tutorial in Week 3, and we did scissors-paper-stone in our internal group to decide who will present, AND I WAS THE UNLUCKY ONE WHO LOST 3 TIMES IN A ROW, so I had to went up to present LOOOL. But it was quite chill, because it wasn’t really a formal presentation, so there wasn’t a lot of stress about this component. Just try to speak up once in a while.
2. Lecture polls (10%)
This was the same format as GET1023, basically, for ggman to track our lecture attendance, and to make sure that we go for his lecture, we have to do some weekly lecture polls that he activates via pollev, during his lecture classes. The pollev is just some discussion quizzes with no right or wrong answer, so we can just pick the option that best resonate with us.
Anyway, now that I have cleared this module, I can expose myself and share about how I exploit this loophole (lol sorry). I was initially quite onz about this module in the first half of the semester so I went for all his lectures and participated in all the lecture polls in the LT. However, nearing the end of the semester, I got super busy (and lazy) to travel to school just for a 1.5 hour lecture, so I ended up skipping his lectures (it was recorded anyway, and the content covered was quite little near the end of the semester so alls good). However, I was abit kiasu, and didn’t want to miss out the Lecture polls, so I just camped at home at the pollev page, and waited until ggman activates his quiz and then inputted my options oof.
3. LumiNUS Weekly Quizzes (15%)
Another very easy to score component. Every week, you will be assigned to some readings (~40 to 50 pages), and ggman tests some of the concepts in the readings. This is a very easy to score component, bc as long as you have read the readings, you will be able to do the quizzes. Besides, the quizzes have no time-limit, and you can basically refer to your notes as you do it.
However, since ggman uploads his readings in scanned formatting, it can be hard to ctrl+f the words and find the answer. I recommend finding a pdf version of the readings, or if you cannot find one, just scan through the readings ( i mean you have to read through anyway ), cuz all the questions are taken from the readings.
The number of questions that ggman gives per week are different, there can be as many as 9 MCQ questions, and as little as 2 MCQ questions. I guess this depends on the intensity of the readings. Nevertheless, I think I remember ggman saying that he will take only the 9 highest score out of the 10 quizzes, so you can technically skip one quiz. Like I mentioned, this is a very easy component to score, and ggman activates the grade distribution book so we can see that almost everyone score full marks for all the quizzes lol. Also, this is where I flex and say that I scored full marks for all 10 quizzez yAY 🏆
4. Midterms (30%)
Midterms comprises of 5 short answered-questions that are done on Examplify. Exam is open-book, so you don’t have to memorise all the examples in the readings + lecture notes (huzzah!!!). What I did to prepare for mid terms was to merge all my lecture notes into one pdf, and then I transferred all my readings into pdf format so that it’s also easy to find the examples.
What I learnt from ggman’s exam from GET1023 was that he expects us to quote examples from the readings, and some of the questions consist of examples from the readings rather than the lecture notes. This was the same for this module, GEH1074. If you want to score well for ggman’s exam, please make sure that you download and read all the readings + make sure that you write down enough examples bc thats where you get the marks!!
I can’t remember the exact phrasing of the questions, but i do remember that ggman actually mixes some of the topic tgt: e.g. What will free-will believers think about the idea of meritocracy? Or smth like Do hard determinists support the idea of meritocracy? (p.s. i cant remember the exact phrasing). And the answer is actually found in one of the readings, so it’s easy for one to just refer to the readings and quote the author.
The median for the mid-terms was around 22/31 marks. I only had one mid-term for this semester (excluding other class quizzes), so i basically spent my recess week just studying for GEH1074 LOL, the hard work paid off and I got close to full marks. :p
5. Finals (35%)
This was the only finals that I had for this semester, so I had close to 2 weeks to study for this one exam LOL. The format was the same as midterms, just that there were fewer questions (4 short answer questions), but they were of higher weightage (some as low as 4 marks, some as high as 20 marks). I think the overall marks was 64???? I can’t remember though.
A good thing about this module is that the content is not cumulative, so we just needed to study the content after recess week, and it was open-book so we just had to merge all the pdf, and bring everything into the exam hall. Despite there being only 4 questions, it was 2-hours of non-stop typing for me LOL because I was just spamming all the examples from the readings and lecture notes.
I think the finals was significantly harder than the mid terms.
The first question was on Piketty’s global tax on capital, its definition, some obstacles to implementation and other existing tax policies that are similar or different to Piketty’s model. I think this was rather straightforward, since this was one of the modified practise question that ggman provided, and the existing tax policies can be found in the readings.
The second question was super hard??? I didn’t understand the question at all, but it was on the topic of the fall of the cryptocurrency FTX, its bankruptcy and how Temesak Holdings (creditor) had to write down its investment?? There were three parts to this questions, and the first part was to elaborate on the predictive abilities of the creditors (like nani?? what is this), then the second and third part was just examples of existing analysts/players in the financial market and to elaborate on their successful investing abilities or smth (nani??? – i just assumed that he was asking about the example on the columnist Koppett and Bill Miller and talked about how everything was due to luck, and threw in concepts of anthropic reasoning, selection bias etc but i think im wrong LOL rip).
The third question was about factors that affect rising inequality, especially in the US and UK (other than the winner-take-all mechanism). – to which I elaborated on the finance industry (can be found in the lecture notes too :D)
I can’t seem to remember the fourth question (rip my short-term memory), so haahhahahaha i guess i shall leave this empty.
tbh I was expecting to be tested about the Sachs’ S-shaped curve, the Mediocristan vs Extremistan differences, but none of it came out. 😬 And I was stunned by the second question gg. But I spammed a lot of concepts so I guess I did relatively… okay? I hope xx
Conclusion
I think this is a really really great module, and its taught by ggman, so you can’t go wrong with this GE 😀
The only downside to this module (same for GET1023), is that theres A LOT OF READINGS every week. But nevertheless, don’t let this deter you, because i really think ggman’s classes are really interesting and i always look forward to his tutorials and content 😀
Others
Lecturer/Tutor: Prof GEORGIOU Georgios
Readings: Too many and time-consuming… 😦
Content: Interesting, but gets boring in the second half of the semester.
Recommend?: Yes, bc its taught by ggman, only downside is the readings. (p.s. got an A+ how lucky 😀 )
This is a compulsory core module for BBA students pursuing the Honours Year. I decided to take it in Y4S1, so that I can have a more chill semester in Y4S2. [P.S. Yes, you can take it in Y3S2 too, provided that you have met the requisites!! Please refer to the guidelines provided by CJD, I believe you have to clear at least 11 out of 13 core modules.]
To protect my identity (so my groupmates, company, prof won’t hunt me down LOOOOOL), I shall not disclose my allocated FSP4003 company and allocated supervisor, but I’ll give a brief walkthrough of my experience doing a 1-semester project, starting from the very beginning:
Forming a team
Before you can even sign up for a project on the FSP portal, you need to form a team. During my batch, we were only allowed to form up to 4 people a team. However, from the latest email by CJD (Mr Chew), I heard that the minimum group members for FSP4003 has increased to 5… [I’m not sure which batch is affected by this announcement… but YALL ARE SO LUCKY :’) ]
If you don’t already know yet, FSP4003 is an 8MC module. I cannot fail to emphasise the importance of finding good groupmates!!! If you don’t want to get allocated to a (bad) team with random groupmates, just reach out to your friends and form a group [P.S. If you really don’t have any friends to group with, on the FSP portal, when you submit your project application, you can tick a box that says that “you need help finding a team” or smth like that. But… I highly discourage this because I’ve heard + I myself have experienced really bad members in a randomized team]
I managed to form a team of 3, and one of my friends invited another dude to join the team, so we managed to get a 4-person team. Anyway, the rest of us didn’t really know the 4th person too well, so we all went to grab a meal even before starting on the project LOL (#teambonding)
2. Signing up for a project on the FSP portal
Now that you have formed a team, appoint someone to be the temporary “leader”. This person will be in charge of applying for a FSP project on the FSP portal on behalf of the entire team. What the leader needs to do is to:
a) Collate everyone’s resumes
b) Do a short write-up that describes your team (ok la, everyone in the team can do this, but I remembered I ended up writing it on behalf of the team cuz nobody knows what we were supposed to write lmaooo)
c) Merge (a) and (b) together into ONE SINGLE PDF, and then upload it on the FSP portal when the leader apply for the projects (on behalf of the team).
And oh ya, do take note that the project application for Semester 1 begins as early as June/July! I’m not so sure about Semester 2, but I believe that CJD do send reminders about the opening of the FSP portal so just keep a look out in your Outlook inbox.
For further clarification:
a) Resume – Should contain YOUR LATEST CAP (out of 5). Everyone in the team have to disclose your CAP in your resume. It’s no surprise that the higher your CAP, the easier for you to source (and get accepted) a project. What I do is that when merging the resumes, I put the resumes in descending CAP order.
b) Write Up – Basically like a cover letter, placed on the very FIRST page (before all the resumes). What I wrote on behalf of my team was:
Introduce ourselves and our various specializations (fluff abit, say why our different specialization will help in the projects = We are a versatile team, can provided all-rounded analysis yada yada)
Talk about our various skill sets (yet another fluff, basically we joined case competitions together yada yada, got experience analyzing business case studies)
Sign off with our names, emails and contact numbers (to say that the company can contact us to discuss our suitability for the project)
This write-up is a generic, standardized cover letter. We did not mention any company names, or express any interest in any available projects. The purpose of this write-up was just to introduce ourselves, and if any company is interested to take us onto the project, they can contact any of us for further discussions.
In case you are not aware, the FSP portal is open for many iterations. There are many, many rounds of applications, and CJD updates the portal with new company projects. Therefore, don’t be frustrated when you don’t get any projects in the first round of application. My team took 3 rounds before we got our project. As mentioned above, companies tend to look at the the CAP of all members when deciding to take up a group. In fact, I heard from my friends, that some groups even have to go for interviews, with the company, to see if they are suitable for the project.
Getting a company project for FSP4003 is more competitive than you think. Therefore, don’t be dejected if you fail your application for the first few rounds! JUST KEEP APPLYING when the portal opens 😀 And yes, when you apply again, you just need to submit the SAME merged documents above (c), that’s why its good to write a generic write-up (b), so you don’t need to tailor it to a specific company!
And oh ya, when you apply on the FSP portal, with the merged PDF file, you can choose your top 3 projects! More information of the projects can be seen on the FSP portal (but walao, its so hard to see the project description, and honestly, when my team and I read it, the project briefs are all so VAGUE LOL). My team and I ended up just going with our gut feel and choosing projects that we think we can all do haha. And after you choose your top 3 projects, since the leader is signing up on behalf of the team, please get your group members MATRIC NUMBER (Starts with A…….) so the system knows that you alr have a group!
To sum up, to sign up for a project, you need
a) a merged PDF containing all group members resumes (with CAP) + a short, generic write-up
b) Go the the FSP portal, uploading this merged PDF.
c) Choose your Top 3 projects (and rank them 1, 2, 3)
d) Write your groupmates matric numbers (to sign up as a team, if dh, tick the box that says you need help finding a team)
e) Submit and you wait to see if you get any of the project. (Basically, you will get a “congrats” email from CJD, and then u (or whoever applied on the team’s behalf) need to go back to the FSP portal to accept the project.
f) If you failed to get any (you will get an “unsuccessful application” email from CJD). Don’t FRET!! Repeat from a), when the FPS portal opens and apply for other projects.
P.S. I personally applied for all 1-semester projects, because I didn’t want to do FSP for 2 semesters (over december? no way).
3. After getting a project
Now that you and your team have gotten a project, congratz!! CJD will send the entire team an email, basically instructions on what you should do going forward. This is where my memory starts getting really hazy but I’m honestly too lazy to check my email, so I’ll just try my very best to recount what I remember:
a) Sign your LOU and COI forms. Basically, some Confidentiality & Non-Disclosure documents, to promise that you won’t reveal any confidential company information after the project has concluded (which is also why i can’t reveal much about my project :p ) Get everyone in the team to sign and acknowledge, then email everything to CJD.
b) Get a supervisor. (If you know any professor to supervise your team, this is when you start reaching out, get his/her approval, and let CJD know). But honestly not a very big deal if you don’t know any prof, as CJD will allocate one to you accordingly. BUT the bad thing about allocating is that my group only got our supervisor in Week 3….. so we only started our project in Week 4 :’D. (and oh thats not even the worst part of my project experience LOL read on to find out more).
c) After you get a supervisor, then you can arrange for a first-meeting with the company. This first meeting is to set expectations, for the company to provide a debrief on the project, and for you and your team to ask any questions. Like I mentioned earlier, as our team only got allocated a professor in Week 3, we couldn’t really reach out to the company (without the prof) so everything was delayed. I vividly remembered only meeting the company and the professor TOGETHER, for the first-meeting, in Week 4 :’D That was stressful.
But in the interval between getting a project, and having our first meeting with the company, here are some things that you and your team CAN do.
a) RESEARCH (secondary) for the project. Find out more about your company, what your project topic is about, questions to ask the company, ANYTHING. (P.s., my group really skipped this part, because there wasn’t a lot of information on the internet about our company and our topic were rather niched and specific to the company (so there was no information on the internet… cries)
b) Read all the documents that CJD send. I remember receiving some tips on the project, some documents on Issue Tree, Work Proposal Sample. It’s good if you and your team can attempt to fill up the Work Proposal Sample before your first meeting. Some components, such as the project budget, and timeline can be left blank, bc these are things that you need to discuss with your company. BTW, you don’t really need to submit the work proposal sample, but just to make sure everyone is on the same page, and also to avoid a potentially awkward first meeting, you can use this work proposal sample to kick start the discussion.
I remembered the entire team and I were so nervous during our first meeting with the company. It was on zoom, but we managed to get Prof to join the call too, so when all of us were very quiet (cuz got nothing to say mah), Prof ended up helping us to ask questions LOOOL. But I think most importantly, you and your team really need to set expectations for what your project is going to be about, timeline (if you intend to set up regular meetings with the company – ours is otot), budget (if any – we had no budget… ).
For us, we were really lucky that the company was a chill one, so it was quite “on-demand”, if we wanted to arrange a meeting with the in-charge, we just have to send him an email, so there wasn’t a fixed meeting timeline. We were also really lucky bc our supervisor was really supportive, and was very chill, in fact, haha we only consulted him once in the entire project ooof. I think this really depends on your own project and supervisor, the experience varies :D. But this goes to show how FSP4003 is really an independent project, you and your team really need to set expectations within the team so that nobody falls behind n you can smoothly complete the project (on time!!!)
4. Recess Week
This is really subjective, and depends on your team progress. But typically, Week 6/ Recess Week is when everyone starts focusing on the PRIMARY RESEARCH. If you are a BBA student, you will notice an influx of emails from CJD, who helps students send out FSP surveys.
I wish I could provide some advice on how this works, but due to the nature of our project, our target audience were not really students, but specific to the company employees. Therefore, we had to send our primary survey to the company in-charge, who helped us disseminate the survey to the company employees.
For my group, we realized that having a primary online survey was not very helpful and couldn’t really provide a lot of analysis to our project. Therefore, we arranged for Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) with the company employees. (cuz why not). Also, this was when I CAUGHT COVID OPPS so we had to hold the FGDs online. (which in hindsight, was such a terrible idea, bc the zoom audio really sucked, and we couldn’t really hear what the participants were saying) Anyway, this was like our first time holding FGDs, and honestly, now that I reflect about it, we did a really good job preparing the questions, but we probably sucked at being the FGDs moderators (so there were a lot of awkward silence HAHAHAHAH). But oh well, I hope we do get extra points for all the effort.
5. Weeks leading up to Presentation Day
After all the primary research, we ceased meetings with the company, and instead, held lots and lots of internal meeting where the team allocate work to do, and meet up to discuss and track progress. What we did was that we choped a specific day of the week, and made sure that we met up every single week, so that we can go through all components together and discuss ideas. Thinking back now, I think we were all relatively productive??? We finished the entire report (without vetting) by Week 12, and already started on the slides on Week 13.
P.S. did you know that the final submission date stated by CJD is not really final? My group and I were so fixated on the 14th November dateline and literally chiong our project, only to realize that the final project submission (incld your ppt, report, reflection journal, peer eval) date was up to our professor. So make sure that you email your supervisor and find out when he/she wants your entire project to be done! I shall not forget getting ghosted by CJD when I tried to check with him lol.. sad..
P.S. did you also know that the recommended pages for the report is also up to your supervisor? it’s ok to not stick with the suggested 30 pages, in fact, my group really exceeded this page limit cuz we had so many things to write. I think we ended up with around 140+ pages (ok la, most of it was appendix, but I think our content took up around 32-34 pages!)
P.S. When you are done with the report, pls send an e-copy to CJD.
P.S. Its not really over til its over, don’t forget to write your reflection journal (5-10 pages) too. This reflection journey just details your fsp journey, and is a literal journal where you reflect what went right and what went wrong, and for the latter, you can throw in suggestions of how it could have been improved. For myself, I made sure that I tracked down the team progress, so that i won’t miss out the details, and made sure to update my journal every week. Honestly, I wrote like 8 pages of fluff, and I felt like I was in primary school again when i was writing my 笔记本 loool . But if yall need ideas on what to write i basically sectioned my journal into
a) Introduction
b) Key takeaways
c) Working as a team
d) Working with Company [name]
e) Conclusion
And throughout I just outlined all the struggles that I (+ my team) faced
P.S. This is a formal presentation (+ to a legit company), pls don’t use slidesgo like we typically do for other mods LOL. Please go look at CBS Case library on how to design ppt:
I think I was quite particular about the slides design for my group, and couldn’t stand the (oops) ugly slides, so I ended up redoing all the slides design by referring to above 😀
6. D-Day
Please try to arrange for a presentation at least 1-2 weeks in advance!! For my team, we had to find a day where our supervising prof and the company ppl can make it. D-Day was less(?) scary that I thought it will be, cuz initially, we were told that the company CEO, CFO, and all relevant employees will be joining the zoom call, so we were all petrified…… However, on D-Day, we were told during the zoom call that the CEO and CFO weren’t able to make it (phew — opps, I meant oh no!). And yes, my presentation was held online over zoom, because we weren’t able to head down to the physical office on the presentation day.
Our presentation lasted over ~50 mins ( and omg, I had like 15mins worth of non-stop script, istg my lungs almost failed on me halfway through) and we had like over ~50 pages of slides excluding appendix and references. Q&A was supposedly after the presentation, and I think my group was just lucky because on the company side, they were quite satisfied with our project ideas, and only had one question to raise, which was coincidentally my part… so i had to answer :D. Our supervising professor did not raise any questions during the Q&A too so yayy
Conclusion
It probably sounds like my FSP journey has been quite smooth sailing, but it wasn’t. Is this where I start… ranting??? I think that were many instances where my team and I had been very frustrated, because there were many changes in the project scope and direction. Due to some unforeseen circumstances, our team had to change our project scope in the middle of the semester, so we essentially had to chiong the entire fsp components in like 7 weeks… Even though this was quite inevitable, and was beyond our control, it still felt super confusing and frustrating (and annoying :’D) as the dateline draws near, and the company just added more and more criteria to the project loool. I think it was because of this that some of us ended up being so unmotivated near week 8/9, and we just wanna yeet this project away :’D.
But nevertheless, FSP was truly a memorable (!you can interpret it however u want it to) experience and 8MC is a true representation of its workload cuz my team and I really spent many hours a week meeting, discussing and writing. The happiest day of the semester was really when we concluded our fsp presentation, and my team just went out for dinner huzzah!!!
Whoever is reading this right now, all the best for your fsp journey jiayou manz!
Others
Lecturer: NIL, have your own NUS supervisor.
Readings: Depends on your own project topic, and how heavily you want to rely on secondary research and literature reviews.
Content: Depends on your own project scope and discussion with the company.
Recommend?: if you are reading this, you don’t have a choice (unless u wanna do dissertation) 🤡 hi biz honours kids. (edit: 20 dec, btw got an A+ for FSP HUAT AH)
Caution: you are about to read a rather biased review of EC3102.
If you have read my previous reviews on EC2102, I really hated macroeconomics HAHA. In fact, I dreaded taking EC3102, knowing that I suffered with understanding (or lack thereof) from EC2102, I really couldn’t imagine surviving EC3102 when I have yet to fully grasp the concept from EC2102. It doesn’t help that I was taking EC3102 literally 1 year after EC2102 in Y2S2, so I don’t even remember anything about macroeconomics… RIP. However, this was a core module, and in fact, the last econs module I needed to fulfil my Second Major in Economics, therefore I bidded for this module… though unwillingly.. 😦
Alas, my prophecy partially came through, I in fact, did suffer through EC3102. Here are the grading criteria:
Lecture viewing, tutorial participation and tutorial assignments (15%)
I took EC3102 under Prof Vu.
Im sorry, but I felt like I was taking a Coursera module, as despite there being a lecture slot for EC3102, there wasn’t a live lecture for EC3102. We were expected to be disciplined enough to watch the recorded lectures from previous EC3102 lectures (probably recorded from few semesters ago). The lectures, were really boring and mainly repeated whatever was found on the lecture slides. I also felt that the lecturer was… quite monotonous, I had to 2x my way through the lecture videos. It did feel like I was better off reading the lecture slides on my own, though there were frequent annotations on the recorded video, I did feel like it wasn’t very important as none of it actually came out for mid terms and finals. As someone who was already disinterested in macroeconomics, this worsened my disinterest further. 😦 In fact, staring at the numerous symbols and long formula in the lecture slides, and not understanding anything made my EC3102 journey even more saddening hais.
O yeah, do take note that EC3102 revisits some of the concepts (?) thought in EC2101 like Lagrange Analysis. Etc: (cropped from the lecture slides), this was on Chapter 2
Honestly, it took me a looooooooooong time to understand and to be able to write out the above without referring to the lecture slides LOL. It does get easier once you understand the concepts but it still does look intimidating at first glance (and even now even though I’ve already completed this mod)
Tutorial participation, like any other typical economic classes, involve doing some discussion questions before class, and volunteering to present the answers on zoom. If i remember correctly, the TA was a PHD student, though her field wasn’t on macroeconomics, she did try her best to go through the tutorial questions on zoom. However, I felt like she was just reading off the answer key….
2. Midterm test (30%)
Mid terms was purely open ended questions with no MCQ. I felt like the mid term tests have the same difficulty as tutorial questions. In fact, a modified question from tutorials came out for one of the question in mid terms.
My revision for mid terms involve creating numerous cheat sheets, writing and redoing the tutorial questions, so I can bring everything into the exam hall AHAHHA. This was an open book exam, so we were allowed to bring in paper and notes. This was a relieve, because I can’t imagine having to memorise all the algebra and long formula in time for mid terms. There wasn’t really any mock papers on EC3102, and neither were there any up-to-date practise papers on the NUS BOX folder for EC3102. Therefore, what I did was to look at 1) Textbook for practise questions and 2) to Google for EC3102 materials. While I did not manage to find any free EC3102 materials online, what I found was Sanjay Chugh’s (TB author) page and some free problem sets + solutions that he uploads for his students. I REALLY RECOMMEND clicking the link and downloading all his problem sets, because they are really great practise and relevant to what was taught in EC3102. Even though the questions didn’t really come out for EC3102 mid terms/finals, they are really great materials for understanding the lecture materials + serve as additional practise papers beyond tutorials. And who knows, some of these questions might come out for your batch instead ;).
3. Finals (55%)
Finals was the same format as mid terms. Unfortunately, I can’t remember anything from the finals at the time of writing, though my advise is similar as per mid terms. Good news is that finals was also open book and content was not cumulative. I also thought that the later half of the semester were easier than the first half, so finals was still manageable.
Thoughts:
I can’t believe I made it out of EC3102 alive. Okay, admittedly, this has been quite a biased post of EC3102 fuelled by my disinterest in Macroeconomics, but I really did not enjoy this module at all. From the Coursera-style lectures and to crazy algebra in the lecture notes, I feel like EC3102 was a rather boring and uninteresting module. Regardless, as it was a core module, I did not have the choice to not take EC3102, though if given the choice, I will definitely choose EC3101 over EC3102.
Sorry if this blog posts feels one-sided, do read other reviews on EC3102 too 🙂
I bidded for EC3101 Microeconomic Analysis II as it was a core module essential to fulfil my Second Major in Economics. EC3101 is a continuation of the foundation module on microeconomics [EC2101]. There is no need to revise EC2101 for EC3101, as EC3101 includes its short review on some foundational topics covered in EC2101 (in the earlier lectures), though the main content seems to focus largely on concepts of Monopoly, Oligopoly, Game Theory Applications, Asymmetric Information. (which, afaik, wasn’t really covered in EC2101).
Here are the grading criteria for EC3101:
Quiz (10%)
Prof Sng will upload two sets of quizzes on LumiNUS in Week 6 and Week 12. There are two attempts per quiz, with no time limit, and we were given more than a week to complete the quizzes. Additionally, the highest marks of both attempts will be taken.
Despite both quizzes being MCQ format, the questions were rather tricky. I remember scoring a whopping 3/5 for the first quiz despite checking and redoing the questions numerous times before submitting. The quiz difficulty does model after the tutorial questions, so do refer to the tutorial questions + lecture notes concurrently when doing the quizzes. And no, there is no true or false questions.
Regardless, because this was an open-book quiz and there was no sort of proctoring, theres no harm discussing with your friends (if you are taking this module with people you know). While the grade distribution for both quizzes were never released, I think many people scored full marks for this component.
2. Presentation and Participation, 10%
Like any other typical economics classes, we were expected to complete a set of problem questions, which will be used as discussion materials during the tutorial slots. During tutorial slots, we were expected to volunteer to present the questions, else risk getting cold-called (esp if you haven’t presented) to do so.
To be honest, the practise questions has been re-used multiple times for the past few semesters. You can ask your seniors who have taken this module in the previous semesters for answers to these tutorial questions, though it is highly discouraged. Regardless, we were only expected to present once in the semester, so my advise is to quickly get this out of the way when the content is easier in the first half of the semester, as the tutorial questions do get pretty difficult near the end of the semester on topics such as Asymmetric Information.
There is no project for EC3101.
3. Midterm Exam (30%)
Midterm exam was a physical exam as MPSH, consisting of a mixture of MCQ questions and open-ended questions. Difficulty of the midterm exams was almost similar to the quizzes and tutorial questions, and out of 30 marks. I believe there were 2 sections to the exams, with Section A (MCQ – 6 questions, total 12 marks) and Section B (open ended – 3 questions, total 18 marks). We were actually given back our mid term papers after grading, though I can’t seem to find it at the time of writing. However, from my hazy memory, I do remember the paper being quite manageable, just do many practices on Cournot and Bertrand Competition and you should be fine.
Additionally, I have mentioned this in my review for MKT3812. MKT3812 covers pretty much the same concept as EC3101, especially on game theory. As I was taking both classes at the same time, I did use the practise questions given by MKT3812 to study for EC3101. If you have any seniors taking MKT3812, do get MKT3812 practise questions and mock exam questions to practise for EC3101. Otherwise, there are also EC3101 mock papers/ past year papers floating around on the EC3101 BOX folder.
Here is the grading statistics for my batch:
The statistics might look startling, but if you follow the above advice (do mock papers from EC3101 + MKT3812 + redo your tutorial questions + quizzes), you can score well for mid terms. In fact, I got 26/30 for mid terms (yay!!)
4. Finals (50%)
Finals was the same format as Midterms, consisting of a few MCQ questions and open-ended questions. I did not receive back my Finals script, however, I did remember that there were a lot more open-ended questions, and I believe the overall score was out of 50.
Do take note that content is cumulative, therefore we were expected to read chapters 1-13 for the examination. However, a heavy weightage of Finals were on the later chapters, so there were a lot of questions on game theory and Asymmetric Information.
Honestly… As mentioned above, I was doing MKT3812 with EC3101. Therefore, I was already practising a lot of questions on game theory and asymmetric information, some even out of scope of EC3101. For instance, game tables consisting of 3-players, backward induction were some questions that I was already prepared for. Therefore, when similar questions came out for EC3101 Finals, I was able to breeze through it quickly. My sincere advise (for hardworking students), is to find seniors with MKT3812 mock papers (/ practise papers) to practise for EC3101 😀 Regardless, I also think that redoing the tutorial questions + quizzes + mock papers for EC3101 (found in BOX folders) are also sufficient.
Grades for finals were never released, so I am unable to share the grade distribution!
Thoughts:
As someone who prefers microeconomics to macroeconomics, I do think that EC3101 is a manageable module, and I especially love the later chapters on game theory. In fact, I did enjoy and found EC3101 to be easier than EC2101 despite the former being a higher level module. However, this may be because I was taking a similar game theory module in the same semester (MKT3812), so I was learning similar content concurrently.
BTW, I was taking EC3101 and EC3102 concurrently in the same semester as well. I do think that taking both modules are quite manageable. However, this is quoted from someone who took (EC2101 + EC2102 + EC2303) in the same semester last year, so it very much depends on your study style. I think its generally okay to take these EC3101 and EC3102, however, do take note there are no overlapping content, so there is no pressure if you want to take it separately as well. In fact, if you want to take it separately, I think that EC3101 was easier than EC3102 (this was considerably much more math-y than EC3101…). Nevertheless, when bidding for your modules, you can check out EC3101 and EC3102 materials on BOX folders to decide which modules to take.
MKT3812 was a 3K Marketing Module that I took to fulfil my Marketing Specialization. This was a module only offered in Semester 2, and was a relatively small (~30 students) class taught by Prof Lim alongside a TA.
If you are taking a second major in economics, I highly recommend taking MKT3812 alongside EC3101, because both modules teach similar contents relating to game theory.
Aymmetric Games: Price Discrimination,Screening and Signalling.
Btw all these contents are also covered in EC3101 LOL. As I took both modules in the same semester, it felt like I was learning the same concepts for both classes, though EC3101 was more maths-heavy in the game theory concepts. This really helped solidify my understanding of the topics + studying for EC3101 felt like I was studying for MKT3812 too :D.
The grading criteria for MKT3812 are as follows:
Individual
Class/Forum Participation (Individual) 15%
As this was a game theory class, the fun part of MKT3812 was that we got to play various games in class (relating to game theory ofc). Class participation comes in the form of active participation in class games, PollEv, forum posts. Every week before class, Prof Lim likes to do a recap of what was done the previous class through PollEv, so if you are taking this class, make sure that you do a quick glance through of your lecture notes before class! For Forum posts, the TA randomly posts questions relating to the topic of the week, etc Give a real-life example of strategic complements/ substitutes. A relatively easy component to score and easy to answer if you have done a bit of readings/ studying!
2. Test 1 (Week 5) 25%
Test 1 was an open ended 5-questions exam covering the first half of the semester, done through a hybrid format (workings on pen-and-paper + keying answers in examplify). Prof Lim provides multiple mock test papers and solutions before Test 1. As far as I remember, we had a couple of exercises and mock tests on Pure Strategy + Mixed Strategy Nash Equilibrium. We were expected to complete them before class ( + Submit on Luminus (optional) for her to look through), as she will go through the solutions in class.
Similar questions from the mock tests came out for Test 1. As mentioned earlier, I took EC3101 in the same semester as well. Therefore, I also studied EC3101 materials + did the problem sets on Nash equilibrium (you can easily find them on the NUS BOX folders). If you feel that the mock tests and exercises are not sufficient, I advise you to look out for EC3101 problem sets as practice materials too.
Everyone did pretty well for Test 1, I believe the average was around 21/25.
3. Test 2 (Week 11) 30%
Test 2 was also similar to Test 1, though it was a paper-and-pen exam. Content were not cumulative, and we were only expected to study for topics after recess week. (Repeated Interactions and Asymmetric Games).
Since the class did well for Test 1, I remember Prof Lim stating that she will make Test 2 harder. Regardless, we were still given a lot of practise materials and mock papers to study for Test 2. In fact, some of the questions from the mock paper (though modified), came out for Test 2. Likewise, I recommend you to go the the EC3101 BOX folder and download some problem sets for practise.
Group Project
The group project task us to examine a marketing-related issue or situation of strategic relevance with an Asian flavour, using the game theory framework. We were expected to showcase game theory concepts, for instance PROPs framework or any other game-theoretic framework developed throughout the course.
Some examples of past projects were on Shopee & Lazada, Guardian & Watson, LiHO & GongCha.
4. Proposal (Group)5%
This is a 1-page group proposal regarding your proposed topic and project scope. There wasn’t a fixed template or guideline about what this proposal should contain, therefore, my group just placed a short summary of our project idea and the game theory tools that we will employ:
Introduction
Background of Company 1 and 2
PROPS framework
Prisoners’ Dilemma
Bertrand Model (if any)
Long term interactions (Pricing Dynamics)
Long-Run Analysis
P.S. This was the flow that my group adopted. You dont have to follow this flow as it very much depends on your chosen topic as well as the game theoretic framework that your group wish to adopt. Regardless, I’ll be placing this here for your reference as my group got full marks for this component.
5. Presentation (Group) 20%
Instead of a live presentation, we were expected to film our presentation and upload it on LumiNUS by week 12. (as there were no classes in Week 12) Since there were no actual report to be done except for the short 1-page brief above, we were expected to showcase the group idea using game theoretic frameworks, through our presentation. As the class will be expected to critique our presentation in Week 13, we were told to make our presentation as clear and concise as possible. The project will be assessed primarily by its accuracy, novelty of the examples, and the delivery of the presentation.
A few weeks later, Prof Lim will release the final grade of the project as well as critique (if any) through email. Not sure how the others fared, but my group got A+ overall with somehow 0 critiques from our classmates.
6. Critique 5%
After every group has submitted their project video on LumiNUS, we were expected to write a short 1-page critique on any group, stating their strengths and weaknesses. This was in Week 13 and there were no classes for the week.
Thoughts:
Though this may sound biased (I am an econs major afterall), I really enjoyed this module, especially time spent playing games in this class HAHA. It really helped that there were a lot of overlapping content between MKT3812 and EC3101, which made it so much easier to study for this module. The project component was also quite chill, in fact, my group procrastinated until Week 11 to do the slides and record the presentation, and we still fared well for the overall project component. As mentioned earlier, even the tests were rather manageable, as long as you grind through the mock papers (+ pro tip: do some EC3101 problem sets) I do find this module really manageable, though it might not be the same for non-econs students. In fact, do take note that MKT3812 do contain maths and calculations, though not as intense as in EC3101. Do read up on other reviews on MKT3812 as well before making your decision 🙂
NUS MODULE REVIEWS 