[School] NUS Module Review AY16/17 Sem 1: SPH3104 Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Public Health

Dear readers,

I realised searching for module reviews on Public health modules are as rare as catching a rare Pokemon. Decided to do a review for SPH3104 as I would like to advise which group of students to take and module and which group of students to not take it.

Grading criteria
- Individual Assignment (30%)
Individual essay assignment, max 1500 words (given in week 2, due in week 3)

You will be given a topic to write an essay about, asking you to describe the problems, causes and some possible solutions to solve that problem related to Public Health. There are 4 different topics, whereby the class will be split into 4; those with the same topic will form a group to work on the group project which determines majority of your grade (besides the final exam)

My topic was barriers to the uptake of vaccination (both influenza and pneumococcal vaccines) in elderly. Pretty simple and straightforward, but make sure if you get references from other countries, justify how is it applicable to Singapore (some similarities and characteristics between SG and the countries)

- Group assignment (40%)
30%: Presentation (15minutes + 5 minutes Q&A by panel of judges)
10%: Peer assessment (basically to make sure you're not the slacker of the team)

SUPER DUPER TIME CONSUMING cos we had to coordinate with a doctor from the CDC and get him to understand what we wanted to do for our project, and it took awhile for him to help us liaise with potential CCs to interview their elderly for our project. Had several meetings with him to discuss and craft out our survey questions, and had to go down to several places to conduct 1 to 1 surveys with the elderly (plus communication problems wasn't of much help also). But for 40% of your total grade, it was ok? and was a pretty good experience which can value-add if you intend to go into the research route (whether in the public health field or not)


- Final exam (30%)
30 MCQs and 3 SAQs
I wasn't expecting such a tough paper as they tested content that they did not pay much attention on. The profs were telling us that they were testing on concepts rather than those medical terms, etc. But WHAT ON EARTH, the minute details of the infectious diseases were tested. And since I wasn't a life science student, I was at a huge disadvantage.

One of the questions required us to list down 4-5 antibiotic resistant bacteria, of which I could only recall Staphylococcus aureus. My groupmates were telling me after the paper that they didn't expect such questions but wrote down according to their life science knowledge. (I guess being a life science student gave my classmates an advantage over people like me lol)

I guess the prof was pretty sly, cos the MCQs had options where answers were very similar which made it hard to eliminate.

Overall comments:
Quite chill for a level 3k mod for lectures (50% of the class doesn't turn up for classes) but group project was time-consuming. Pray you have good group members that are proactive, and pray that the group members and yourself have similar timetables  (or else peer review scores will affect your overall grades- try to be present during meetings/ do all the saikang)

Final exams was horrible, was worried I would fail the module, but I guess if you're to take the mod, just study all the small details (some of which are not found in the lecture notes but were mentioned by the lecturers)

You have to remember which diseases are vector-borne diseases, which are zoonotic diseases. Not an easy feat for non-life science students unless you have taken biology in JC before.

Should you take this module?
Life science students- Yes
Non-life science students- Maybe
Depends on whether you have interest in biology/ enjoy memorizing medical terms/ names of bacteria

[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 AY 15/16 Sem 2 Module Review: EC3371 Developmental Economics by Dr Elisabetta Gentile

Hi Readers,

Back with NUS module review again. This time round for EC3371. I realised the most recent module review for this module was for AY13/14 which made me hesitant in taking the module. So here's a review to help all make their decisions for your Econs elective modules.

Professor: Dr Elizabetta Gentile

Lectures:
2 hour lecture slots
Usually lasts 1 hour 35 minutes, occasionally ends early depending on feasibility of where lecture is stopped.

Lectures are held not in LTs but in AS6 since class size is small which was really not conducive for me to learn in especially when you come in 2 minutes before class and forced to sit all the way at the back of the classroom as the front seats are all fully filled.

Professor Gentile is very knowledgeable about this module which is really good because she really knows what she's teaching. To be honest though, everything she mentioned in lecture is pure regurgitation from the textbook. She leaves out some information from her slides and mentions them during the lecture, so it seems like there's a lot of information to note down. Truth be told, those info can be found in the textbook.

There will be a 10 minute break in between after the lecture has hit the 1 hour mark.

It seems like a lot of people do not attend lectures as it looks more like a class of 40 plus rather than 70.

Lectures are ok, not much to comment on.

Tutorials:
Graded presentations (20%)
Attendance and participation (10%)

Everyone will be split into 5 groups namely Alpha, Beta, Charlie, Delta and Echo, so for the first week of tutorial, Team Alpha will present a research paper that will be uploaded beforehand, then the next week, Team Beta will present another research paper. So after Team Echo has presented their first paper, Team Alpha will continue the next week to present the next paper for their presentation.

Each team will therefore need to present a total of 2 times. Each presentation is worth 10%. Since class is small, there is only 4 tutorial groups. Unfortunately or fortunately, my tutorial group was the smallest tutorial group with only 12 people. What does this imply?

Each team was only the size of 2 to 3 people, and my team only had me and another guy. My other friends, who were in larger tutorial size, had 5-6 people in their team. To me, that was really unfair because I was only a year 2 student with no background of EC3304, and I was tasked to present a phD research paper that had foreign terms like Difference in differences, IV regression, 2SLS, etc, all of which was not covered in EC3303. And EC3304 was not even a prerequisite for this module although indicated that it will be beneficial.

Thank god my partner was a Year 3 student that have taken EC3304 already, so he had a clearer understanding on the terms, and made it easier to work on the presentation.

Presentation grades for each round will be uploaded after the last team (Team Echo) have presented. It is graded out of 100.

Attendance and participation in included in the assessment of this module, and it made me really stress because whenever someone in the tutorial 'participated' aka, posed questions to the presenting team, the tutor will highlight your name to note that you did participate in that particular tutorial.

For my tutorial, Prof was my tutor and her expectations of tutorials were really high. Your questions had to make some sense or else she will end up rebutting against your point. In my opinion, to score for the participation component, just pose questions on parts of the presentation you are not clear on and if there are areas where labeling isn't clear in the presentation, ask the presenters to clarify. That earns you some participation grade too.

For those in larger tutorial groups, participation would be harder because everyone will compete to get their participation grade, so fastest hands as usual.

Always be punctual for tutorials!!! I once went into class early, placed my bag and went to the washroom cos I had a 3-hour Utown lecture before the tutorial, and when I came back it was 1 minute pass the start of class, and although the presenting team have yet to start their presentation, guess what? I was marked late....

You can never argue with Prof Gentile, she will always win the debate, so I just had to accept that I was marked down for attendance because I came in a minute late after going to the washroom..

Midterms:
Midterms was not that tough. Of normal difficulty, questions that tested a lot on your understanding on the concepts. What killed me was the first part of the paper, because she tested on specific definitions. She gave you the definition, and you had to identify which period is this referring to (eg. Malthusian period or which era of growth is this, etc.)

I did not expect that kind of definition question to come out, so I lost my 10 marks there.

Finals:
For me, it was a killer paper. Prof told us that the format of the paper is the same as midterms, but it turned out to be really different. Finals was supposed to be comprehensive, but she did not test anything from the first half of the lecture for content... Although mathematical questions from first half were tested (developmental and growth accounting)

Overall:
It was quite an ok module to take IF you like structured questions and you like challenge. Let me know if you guys have questions by posting in the comments column below!

Love,
Rachel

[School] Is Economics at the University level really for you?

Dear Readers,

I decided to do a post which targets tertiary students still contemplating if Economics is really what you want to pursue in University! Many of my guy friends entering Uni this year actually started texting to ask me what exactly Economics is about at the University level.

I believe, many of you A levels and Poly graduates out there might be wondering, is Economics like in the A levels where it is all about drawing demand and supply curves, identifying deadweight losses in market failure graphs and writing and explaining policies essays after essays?

Unfortunately not, my dear readers! Economics at the Uni level is not about essay writing. Yes, it might have been an Arts subject at the A levels but in Uni, it is very mathematical and it is a social science subject, although in the Arts and Social Sciences Faculty. However, you will need to draw SS and DD curves too, especially in Macroeconomics, but there will be a lot of other graphs you will need to know and learn about too!

What do I mean by Economics being a very mathematical subject? It involves data analysis, many regressions and knowing how to interpret coefficients of the regression results. Integration and differentiation do come into picture for certain modules, so if you're thinking you can escape all that math, then you should reconsider. Also, microeconomics covers quite a bit on Game Theory, so if you enjoy topics like the Prisoner's Dilemma, you might enjoy Economics quite a bit.

Economics is actually one of the biggest major cohort in NUS FASS. What does this imply? Very competitive when it comes to grading of the modules. Since it is all about math and application, many math geniuses out there including Chinese scholars excel in Economics modules.

Sometimes, these geniuses even scores full marks for their midterms, when the mean is 70-75 out of 100. Try to aim and get at least the Average or Median score to secure a decent grade.

Also, some tips on selecting what modules to take in the first semester:
1. Try to clear all your compulsory FASS baskets first (especially the Asian Studies basket)
2. For EC majors who are more or less cfm on EC as their major, take EC2104 and EC1101E together (Make full use of your S/Us)
3. Do something you think you might not be able to score well, and don't want to risk getting B- and below.


Some tips for potential Economics Majors before concluding on this post:
1. Read your textbook! They are very important sources of information and practice questions.
2. Attempt the questions and exercises in the Textbook (especially if the Prof even issues which questions to attempt in his/her lecture notes)
3. Read your lecture notes and remember key details (some Prof enjoy torturing students by testing specific contents in the lecture notes)
4. Most importantly, DO CONSTANT REVISION!!

I think these tips are general for all students, not necessarily Econs majors.

Hope you guys make the right decision to pursue something you enjoy doing, and feel free to drop me a comment if you guys need to clarify anything about Econs.

I might not be the best person to answer your doubts, but I will try my best to help (which is also my purpose of setting up a blog in the first place)

Love,
Rachel

[School] NUS AY14/15 Year 1 Semester 1 Module Review: EC2104

Hi all,

Back with module reviews again!

Many people are asking me if EC2104 should be taken in Y1S1 or Y1S2. My stand is to take it in Y1S1. When I took it in AY14/15 Y1S1, I took it without knowing what it was about. It sounded a little tough from the module description and my Econs senior was telling me that Roy Chen is a good lecturer, which was why I decided to take it in Sem 1 to make full use of my free S/Us! (Thank god for gradeless first semester!)

EC2104

Lecturer: Roy Chen, the Asian guy with really strong American accent. He was a decent lecturer, I wouldn't say he was a perfect lecturer (seriously, define perfect..)

Workload: Decent. Just the usual take home and discuss in class: problem sets. Presentation in tutorial is a must to get your participation marks. Try to discuss with your friends the answers, cos correct answers definitely help in presentation scores (although the profs always says that accuracy isn't important, its the effort that counts...)

Difficulty: Not that difficult. It might seem a little confusing if you do not read your lecturers before classes, but I usually read through beforehand to roughly know what that lecture is about. And then read through it again after lecture. Everything will make much more sense if you choose to study that way. It worked well for me.

Tutor: I forgot his name, But I felt like he totally rolled out of bed to attend tutorials. Dressed in slippers and bermudas, not that appropriate an attire for a Teaching Assistant (given the amount of pay they earn)

Textbook: Essential Economics textbook which I did not touch at all although Roy kept telling the class that the textbook has important information. My friend went for one-on-one consultation with Roy and told me that he said the textbook isn't important. Focus on lecture slides, which I have always believe is the best resource for revision.

Exams: Not that tough for midterms since it was 15 MCQs and the average was about 9/15? I got 12/15 although that was totally unexpected. If you read through the lecture slides, redo your tutorials and attempted the past midterm papers, the midterm shouldnt be a problem for most, unless you were careless.

Finals was nerve-wrecking because I only knew how to do 2 complete questions. There was this theorem in the last few parts of the lecture (which I obviously don't remember its name) which I did not understand completely, and which I was praying will not come out. Ended up, almost all questions involved the use of that formula/ theorem ): I just attempted all the questions to the best of my ability, and at least not submit an empty, non-attempted question paper although I had no idea how to use the formula/theorem.

Thankfully, I did decently well for this module and did not need to S/U it. It is a fairly manageable module and I personally feel you should take this module in Y1S1 with your economics intro module. Once you have taken this module, the later modules like EC2102 and EC2101 will have some overlapping content(:

Cheers,
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