Academic experience
Wealth management, fixed income, financial processes, and equity valuation. I enjoy being taught by teachers who have been in the professions. The teacher are working in financial banks and coming to teach us, sometimes invite speakers. The challenges I face was enrolling courses. I found it not as straight forward to enrol courses and had to ask people how to do it. The enrol process is very different to UQ. The enrolment process in NTU goes like this... you first pick as many course you want to do. At a date, the system will automatically allocate you to classes. In my case, I only got offered one class, but I want to have four. So I had to contact the course coordinator to ask for 3 more subjects, which they gave me. But it was complicated and feeling uncertain.
Personal experience
I met so many people from different countries including the States, UK, Canada, Europe, Korea, Taiwan, and I enjoyed staying in the campus because we would go out everyday. I enjoyed going to new places I never been to and it was really good to see something new. I developed culture awareness and discover opportunities. I would say this experience really helped me grow as a person.
Accommodation
I live on campus shared with another roommate. I enjoyed staying close to class and experience the life of a campus accommodation. As for housing, we were only allow to select single or double room, and that is automatically selected for you, you don't get to pick where you want to stay. You can also live outside of campus which is more expensive, around $400 per month. I paid S$300 per month, and there is a food court in every hall accommodation so it's very convenient to get food, and a lot of hall activities.
Costs
For a week I spent S$75 for rent, S$5 per meal on food 3 times a day for 7 days so S$105, entertainment are cheap too, you can have another S$100 for that, so one week you would spend around S$280. S$1= around A$1. You can download this app call Grab, which is the uber of asia. They have promotions sometimes which can help you get some bargains. If you want to go oversees to other Asia countries, you would have to plan for additional budget. I spent S$1200 on my 10 days trip to Thailand and Vietnam. Make sure you exchange more than you need when going overseas as you might need more.
Challenge
The challenge I face was the culture differences. You need to make sure to always follow the laws and rules of that country, and understand the culture well to stay out of trouble. I made friends in Singapore who told me what I shouldn't do, so that helps. Other than that, I didn't had much trouble with language because I can speak both Mandarin and English so it was actually nice for me to practice my mandarin again and learn Singlish.
Professional Development
Definitely culture awareness skill as well as networking skills. There are people from all around the world doing exchange here, so it was really great to hang out with them and learn about their experience. There are also a lot of events to attend in Singapore. I was interested in blockchain, so I went to a lot of blockchain events and network with a lot of people who are in that industry. This definitely contribute my personal and professional development because it gives me a new perspective of what I can work in.
Highlight
Great Food, Great People, Great System.
Food are cheap and delicious.
People are friendly and easy going.
Transport system (MRT) is awesome.
Top tips
Enrol some easy courses so you can enjoy and have fun. I don't think it is necessary to study 3rd year finance courses as it was difficult, but manageable. As long as you do what you are interested, that's important because you go there to have fun, not to study hard as it is just a pass or fail. You can also do the hard major subjects UQ offers in NTU so that your GPA won't be affected. Another advice is to explore as much as you can. Get to know people early from the start and build strong connections. After a few weeks, people tend to find their social groups already so you might not be able to meet these people as much as you would at the start of the exchange.
