[School] NUS Module Review AY16/17 Sem 1: EC4394 Behavioural Economics

Hey friends,

Back with some module review (will start with those mods which I had trouble looking for reviews online, if necessary, I'll continue with the more popular mods reviews.

EC4394
Lecturer: Roy Chen
Style of lessons: 3-hour seminar once weekly, a short 5-10 minutes break in between
2 slots available for bidding
No tutorials (each seminar class is about 40 people)

Grading:
Majority on group work
- Group Project (30%)
Where you have to come up with a topic (for Roy's approval) and then you have to produce a written report to explain how your group is going to conduct the experiment (but you don't have to actually conduct the experiment)
- Group Presentation
Each group is assigned one week where you have a set of research paper to read and present its findings on (basically just a normal presentation)
- No Midterms
- Class participation (10% if I remembered correctly)
- Finals (40%)
Very simple, if you have practiced and have listened in class.

Personal views on module:
- Content wise: very manageable
- Little math involved. Basic math only (subbing in of values)
- Interesting content which allows you to understand why people make different decisions.
- Roy Chen was an amazing prof
- All the marks for various components (group assignments and presentations) amongst all groups were pretty close. Meaning determining factor on whether you get an A depends on your finals
- Finals was easy (tested the concepts rather than all the minute details)
- Roy Chen made the class more interactive by using Moblab (an online application to play payoff games aka dictator games with other classmates). PLUS, if you're chosen as the lucky pair, you get the payoff you get in the game. (Some people won $12- just by attending class;good money in my opinion)

Do leave a comment if you have further queries.

Cheers,
Rachel

[School] NUS Module Review AY15/16 Sem 1: EC3322 Industrial Organisation I

Hey Readers!

Back with module reviews again! Have received an overwhelming response for level 3000 module reviews so I have decided to do a review for EC3322 Industrial Organisation I which I have taken in AY15/16 Sem 1.

Professor/ Lecturer: Dr Eric Fesselmeyer

Lecturer Rating: 4.5/5

Tutor: Hai Long

Tutor Rating: 3/5

Lectures:

Lectures were good. Prof Eric has been teaching this module for quite a period of time so he is very clear and is a master of the content covered. Content covered is very mathematical. However, a downside is that Prof Eric tends to skip alot of steps in his lecture slides which makes us really lost IF you do not read the slides and attempt the solve the sums beforehand. 

Content covered is very interesting. First half of semester has lighter workload than 2nd half. So try to do well for midterms as paper was alot easier due to lesser content in first half of semester.

TIP: Read his slides both before and after the lecture. You'll have an advantage over other students.

Tutorials:

Attendance sometimes were self-marked (attendance sheet passed around the class) while other times marked by the tutor. Along with the attendance sheet would be the tutorial presentation sheet where you can tick next to which questions you want to present. However, this doesn't mean you'll 100% cfm get to present. If demand is high for that particular question, the tutor will just randomly pick one to present that question, which also means only that 1 person gets the tutorial participation points. 

If you can do the tough question sets, then I would recommend you volunteer to present for those questions because certain questions are considered bonus and will give you double points.

Hai Long is Vietnamese so his accent was really strong and sometimes I could not understand him well as pronunciation of certain words was not clear. This wasn't too big a problem as he is very friendly and willing to help even after class hours. He tend to show us other examples and how certain questions can be tweaked and this means tutorials usually took the full hour, and we often had the next tutorial class chasing us out. 

I had an occasion where Hai Long could not make it and Prof took my class instead. It was quite scary but a good experience having Prof as your tutor. Prof made sure that when you present, you knew how to get the answers. He would question every single step you took to derive the answer

Midterms:

Content was easier than finals as only first half of the syllabus was tested and content was easy to understand. I had several careless mistakes and ended up doing very badly for midterms which pulled down my final grade in the end. Bell curve for Midterms was pretty steep and I was at the end of the bell-curve (25th percentile bottom) which made it hard to pull up my final grade.

TIP: Try to score for Midterms, I had friends getting 80+/100.

Finals:

Cumulative finals meant alot more content was tested. As much as the content interest me a lot, it was quite a handful of content to revise for finals although I enjoyed reading the content. Slightly tougher content for 2nd half as a variety of questions can be tested. 

Finals was challenging compared to midterms and I regretted not checking my paper thoroughly for midterms. 

Overall:

I believed my finals pulled my grade up but my midterm performance was disappointing. I will recommend this module to all as content covered is interesting and pretty applicable to real life. If you're good in math, this would be an advantage too. 

If there are any queries, pls feel free to comment below and subscribe to be updated for more module reviews. 

Love,

Rachel

[School] NUS AY14/15 Year 1 Semester 1 Module Review: EC1101E

Dear Readers,

I'm back with module reviews for my first sem ever in NUS!

Modules taken: 

1. EC1101E
2. LSM1301
3. EL1101E
4. SSA2204
5. EC2104

I am going to dedicate this post purely for EC1101E 

An exposure module for Economics.

Overall: You might have read other reviews that it is very similar to A level Economics content, however, I would say everything in A levels including some new concepts like the prisoner's dilemma was included. Class is very big, but the 3 hour lecture (which started only in my Y1 Sem1) was a very bad idea.

Lectures: I would think it is important to listen in the lectures, as it allows easier comprehension of the topics. Although I have to agree, 3 hours is really crazy, Dr Ong Ee Cheng was really nice and she always had at least one video/ animation for lecture. It helped a lot, both to wake up me up and keeping me entertained in class, as well as for understanding the topic she was on that day. Dr Ong taught the first half of the semester, while the other guy (I can't remember his name), taught the second half. 

Dr Ong covered Microeconomics, while the other male lecturer taught Macroeconomics. I personally preferred the micro part as it was more similar to A level Econs. Macro on the other hand, involved more calculation like calculating the GDP deflator, CPI, Inflation rate, etc. Furthermore, the lecturer wasn't as good as Dr Ong. (I think he tried to hard to be funny and crack really lame jobs- that hardly anyone ever laughs at). (OH I REMEMBERED HIS NAME, Mr Chan Kok Hoe)

Lecture content was manageable (if you paid attention). Dr Ong kept emphasizing that the Textbook: Principles of Economics by Mankiw was very important and urged us to get the latest edition which was published in 2014. I obviously didn't as I felt it was a waste of money. Thankfully my friend gave me the ebook, and I had the older version in hardcopy (blue and white copy) since my cousin passed hers to mine. I referred more to the hardcopy one as I didn't like reading from the ebook (I suspect I'm a detractor of technology)

The textbook was really good and useful! A must get and it was useful for the weekly quizzes (ungraded) before each week's lecture. 

Tutorials: I think the tutorials were ok. At the start the tutorial questions were rather manageable, but towards the end of the semester, I struggled a little with the questions and had blanks when i attended tutorials. My tutor was a young lady, Clarissa Ooi, and she made everyone present their answers on the board (based on a rotation basis). However, her explanations were not clear and she doesn't know much about EC1101E content as often she said that she will check back with the prof and email back the questions we posed. Also, she often ended tutorials late (instead of the usual 45min, it became exactly 1hour), therefore there were some people who would leave class earlier to head for their next lesson). 

I heard that the other tutors provided very clear explanation to every single question especially those questions that were common mistakes and provided tips on how to avoid those mistakes. It was a pity I did not get those better tutors which meant I needed to work harder on my own.

Conclusion: EC1101E is not hard to score, but you have to put in a lot of hard work to get at least an A as the midterms and finals were not too tough. They were manageable. So long as you have studied well, memorising and understanding the logic behind the graphs, how to explain shift in demand and supply, how taxes and subsidies affects the curves, how to compute GDP deflator, etc., you should do just fine for this module!

On a side note, for my semester, Dr Ong made us get The Undercover Economist by Tim Harford as well as the Undercover Economist Strikes Back. I got only the former book, and read it diligently (although it was purely optional, I felt that it was a very interesting book to read which strengthened and helped in understanding the concepts, and why certain people make certain decision (eg. in businesses)

I did decently well, although I expected a higher grade. I guess this module was really competitive and especially since it was a large cohort, the distribution of grades were more bell-curved and follows approximately a normal distribution. (I heard one of my RI friends attended only one lecture and slept in tutorials got an A for the module in the end)

Hope the review helps!

Cheers,
Rachel

[School] Post A levels to Uni- being an Economics major (NUS AY14/15 Y1)

Dear readers, Decided to make my blog alive once again. I'm such a slothful person, but I'm really keen to help people out there who really needs help and are struggling/ confused with life. I did decent for A levels in 2013. No straight As, disappointing grades for my strongest subjects, I felt that it was the end of life. How am i going to continue on my studies in a more highly respected faculty in a local university?

 My mother was exploding into madness when I told her of my results. It wasn't worth celebrating, definitely, but I think I deserved at least some sort of encouragement from her, since I wasn't in the best of mood after receiving my results. I was definitely delighted at the amazing numbers of perfect scorers in the cohort and also the number of friends who managed to head up on stage to shake Ms Lai's hands, however, inside me, I was sort of shaken at my mediocre results.

 Where am I supposed to go after the Horrifying A levels journey?

I could get into at least 2 of the major Faculties in NUS, NTU and SMU, but that didn't seem good enough for my mother, who's a very traditional parent that wants her child to be at least a doctor, lawyer, dentist, or whichever career equivalent.

I am very strong in Math and the Sciences, however, I couldnt imagine myself doing H2 Chemistry/ Biology/ Mathematics at a higher level at the University. Furthermore, I personally feel that the prospects of a Life Science major isn't as good as other more generalised majors. Probably because I still do not have a real goal in life, I wanted a major which was more flexible and general. (And I heard Math at the University level deals with 20 over levels of differentiation- and I couldnt imagine doing that for 3 or 4 years) Which was why I decided to do Economics at University. It involved Mathematics, which Im generally better at (compared to the other subjects).

My mother actually was quite insistent on sending me overseas to do Medicine, Dentistry or Law, but I kept telling her the school fees are not cheap and I have a very strong emotional attachment to both my mother and grandmother (which makes it even harder for me to leave the country for long periods of time- even a 5 day overseas trip makes me a little homesick *covers face in embarrassment*). So, NUS Economics was what I chose in the end.

Semester 1 went rather smoothly. I'll post modules reviews later on in other posts. I didnt join any CCA or external activities in school. I didn't really know how the university timetable is, so i just simply seeked the advice of my seniors who told me that I should have a 2 hour break in the middle of the day to have lunch with my friends.

I TOTALLY REGRETTED IT.

Although this time was useful for revision, I think 1hour is sufficient for lunch, especially if your previous lesson before your lunch break is a lecture (since lectures end 30minutes beforehand). I had a 4 day work week, with 2 hour lunch break everyday except Thursday where I had only 3hours of lessons (so i just placed it back-to-back). I felt it was a waste of time as I ended school (Monday-Wednesday) at 5pm!! *inserts sad face*

Sem 2 was slightly tougher and more hectic for me. It was also a demoralising semester. After learning from my 'mistakes' in timetable management from Sem 1, I decided to not have lunch breaks in between at all, and made full use of the 30 minutes after lectures to get food. This way, I managed to squeeze and pack my timetable into a 3day week, where I worked on the other 2 weekdays.

If you're thinking my plan is actually a good idea, frankly, 30 minutes is definitely NOT ENOUGH IF the timing falls between 12pm- 1pm, as this is the peak lunch hour for everyone (office staff, lecturers, profs, students). It's people mountain people sea at all eateries and canteens throughout the university compound. This is why I had to miss lunch for most of my days, and if lucky enough, get a waffle from The Deck (provided there was a short queue)

This Sem 2 was tough as it was either I understood the topics, but COULD NOT SCORE. OR, I could not understand the topics at all. OR, the module is too competitive (especially for open book examinations)

P.S If you think that open book exams are easy to score and striaghtforward, which does not require revision beforehand, then YOU'RE WRONG. I thought the answers would be straightforward, and I basically read through my lecture notes twice (to know roughly where to get the answer from), but I was stunned during the exams.

I did really badly for that midterm because:
Firstly, the lectures were not webcasted, and I often got to lecture slightly late so I probably missed some information here and there.
Secondly, the lecturer was Caucasian, and I have some difficulties understanding his accent. Thirdly, I didnt organise my notes properly (it was basically by lectures- but some topics were cross-listed!!) Lastly,, I was too lazy to search for the answers during the exams cos I had a 2cm thick notes plus cheat sheet from my friend (but still couldnt find the answers *facepalm*), which made me kinda give up nearing the end of the exam when almost 40% of the cohort have left the exam hall.

The midterms was 50%, and basically, 50% was gone- because of the reasons listed above (HAHA)

Basically, Economics is interesting as it involved models, graphs, and lots of mathematics. If you're interested to know more about the modules. Stay tuned to my reviews which I'll post really soon for Y1 Sem 1 and Y1 Sem 2 for AY14/15. Thank you for reading!

Cheers,
Rachel