[School] Hanyang International Summer School (HISS) 2015 Review- Academic related

Hey readers,

Finally back again with HISS 2015 review, this time round on academic related issues.

It seems that my recent HISS post was quite popular, and I'm guessing its because people are now making plans for their summer break already.


General info:

• Hanyang University (HYU) offers modules with 3-credits (which is equivalent to NUS 4 MCs)
• During HISS, you can map up to a maximum of 3 modules back to NUS.
• Classes offered at HISS are in blocks of 3 hours
• First class starts at 9am, 2nd class at 1pm, 3rd at 4pm.
• IF IF IF you intend to go to Korea with the intention to explore the whole city and perhaps even travel to Jeju, JUST TAKE 2 MODULES ( I would personally recommend taking one in the morning and the other in the afternoon)
• There is a one hour lunch break in between the first and second class.
• You are free to travel anywhere around the school campus for lunch (or even out of school if you think you have enough time to fly out and fly back) but people normally just eat at the Business School Canteen (although the food menu on certain days suck; anyway, more on food in my next post! I'll introduce you to more school food- which many others do not know of)\
• Last lesson ends at 7pm which is a very sad timing since you end up spending your precious evening in class
• Professors are mainly from the States since most of the profs are from the partner universities of HISS (and their students from these partner universities actually gets free accommodation!!!)
• Don't worry, lessons are conducted fully in English
• Worried about passing the module? Don't worry, you'll need to try very hard to fail this module. And you can do so by skipping 2 or more lessons in your entire 4 weeks.
• Korean language modules are EXTREMELY COMPETITIVE. Do camp in front of your laptop early to reserve a space.
• Since the programme is a 4-week one, midterms are held on the 2nd week. (PLEASE DO NOT FREAK OUT, the midterms were not that bad)
• Clearly, finals would be held on the final week.
• Don't be worried if the midterms are all held on the same day (mine did) and I turned out fine.

Health Equity

Prof: Dr Sunshine Cowan from UCO

Class hours: 9am to 12pm

Content and class routine:

Content revolves around Epidemiology, how everything in your environment affects your health. Class is very interesting since Prof Cowan is very entertaining, and she is extremely kind and lovely. This module is great for people in NUS that want to map back as a Public Health module; perfect for Minors in PH.

We usually watch videos about the different areas in US and how living standards varies in the different parts of the world and how exactly do these differences affect the way we live and how it impacts our health.

Midterm: Week 2 morning. Fill in the blanks, MCQ and some short structured questions including 1 bonus question. Paper was out of 100 points.

Finals: Week 4 Thursday morning. Can't really remember the format, but mainly comprised of fill in the blanks, short answer questions and 2 bonus questions. Note that you will not get back your finals exam scripts. You can only view your final grade once you touch down in your homeland (around 2 weeks time for results to be published on their own 'IVLE')


Money and Banking:

Prof: Mr Lee ( I forgot his full name, cos we never ever call the profs by their names)

Class hours: 1pm to 4pm

Content and class routine:

Money and banking was quite popular also as it hit the maximum class size of 36 quite quickly during course registration. Covered simple interest rate and money related stuff. Very basic things that I think would be covered in an introductory course to money and banking. Prof was a bit monotonous and we didn't listen much in his lecture. The Korean oppas sitting beside me were all watching baseball, rugby matches and MMA fights with their laptops. My Kazak friends were sleeping in lecture the whole 4 weeks (minus 2 lectures which they didn't attend)

About 2.30pm- 3pm, Prof Lee will get us to break into our small groups of about 5 and do the questions at the back of the textbook (which he photocopied for us the questions)

Then around 3.20pm, he will randomly call out a group to present their answers on the board to the entire class, but sometimes we were just too lazy to do it and Prof Lee wasn't that strict though so you do not need to worry so much about this component.

Prof Lee is super adorable that my friend asked him to take selfie before she exited the exam hall. Everyone was trying to hide their laughter cos Prof smiled so adorably to the camera and even asked my friend which is the camera black dot to look at (:

Midterm: Prof Lee was so 'on' about his midterms that he prepared 6 different papers labelled A-F so that everyone around you will not get the same paper and we would not be able to copy each others' answers. Paper was fully MCQ though, so it wasn't that bad.

Finals: Similar to the midterms, with 6 different MCQ papers. I think he just jumbled up the questions, but all 40 questions were the same I guess. Similar to Uni exams, once you were done with the paper you can just leave. So if you complete it quickly means you can either end school early or have a long break before your next class (evening class).


Introduction to Sociology:

Prof: Kitsy Dixon

Class Hours: 4pm- 7pm (Very bad timing for class tbh)

Content and Class Routine:

This module actually scared me at the beginning because a graded essay assignment was given during the 2nd lesson and was due in 3 days time. Can you imagine, I went there as a freshie, not knowing anyone, not knowing how summer schools are supposed to be, and the first thing I needed to do was a graded Soci essay?

Turned out to be ok, thankfully as prof marked the essay very leniently. Every lesson had a discussion component so we were supposed to break into groups to discuss the topic for that day. Prof was quite strict about using phones in class and maintaining class order. So whoever did anything that broke her regulations meant getting lectured. During the first class she set her rules very strictly and expected us to follow her regulations (no phones in class, no sleeping, etc.)

We had an excursion session during one of the lessons where we went to the Emart at Wangsimni station to observe people's expressions, behaviour, etc. I did not manage to attend that session cos my friend and I had alternative plans *ahem*

We also watched videos about linking the sociological models and perceptions in our society tht

Class usually ended at 6.30pm and it was a good time head out for dinner with your friends.

Midterms: I can't remember much about what was covered in the midterms, but I remembered very clearly that Prof told us the paper is full MCQ but turned out that she tested a flow model which required precise labelling and I totally did not memorise everything in the flow model in term as I was out at one of the fieldtrips organised the day before.

But turned out to be not too bad although I had friends getting full marks for the paper. Prof Dixon just tested the main concepts to ensure we really understood the key definitions.

Finals: Very similar format to the midterms. Content covered is much wider.

All in all, I was very worried at first because the first lesson made me worry about passing the modules, especially for Money and Banking but I wasn't listening much to prof but was watching Running Man or The Return of Superman. But everything turned out fine. If you intend to get straight As for all your mods to be get the Top Student Award at the Graduation ceremony then please be more attentive in class.

To be honest, I think class hours are great for making new friends and learning a new culture. I had classmates that were from the U.S.A, Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Netherlands, etc. It was a great experience conversing with them and getting to know their culture like.

Also, different Profs guest lectures each other's lessons so it was really cool getting to know more Professors. All of them were really really nice and tried not to give us work on Thursdays to allow us to enjoy the fieldtrips on Fridays and for us to enjoy our weekends. I really did not regret taking 3 modules in the end, as I still managed to use the time after my last class for bonding dinner with my international friends(:

If anyone has more queries, do feel free to comment below.

Feel free to share the blog with your friends that are considering/ in the midst of application to HISS!(:

[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