Study Information Technology in Singapore?

2010-11-23T16:24:00.000-08:00

IT !

THE acronym of the century. Everybody is involved with some sort of information technology nowadays. We can´t even imagine a life without our little helpers, may it just be your mobile phone to call your friend, or the navigation system in your car to tell you fastest way from A to B. So one thing is clear: Having skills in IT is more important than anything else, and this trend will continue to rise in the future.

Another important factor you might have noticed whilst using your little electronic gadgets: You look at the rear side of them and find most of the time the label "Made in ..." Made in where? Made in Asia should the label be. May it be Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong or whatever, most of the time the electronic gadgets are produced in Asia. One may say "cheap workforce". This was true a few years ago, but more and more, Asia starts to not only produce, but entirely develop product lines in Asia. India is even outsourcing their customer support to the USA. Times do change!

So for me, being always fascinated by computers and having focused all my undergraduate studies on IT, one thing was crystal clear: I should continue my postgraduate studies in Asia. But Asia is huge! You have a lot of influences and cultures in this continent. You can't compare China to Japan, eventually they have nothing in common in their culture although the typical Western European couldn't see a difference between all those funny characters they use and their squeaky language...

A few factors should always be highly important for your choice of study place:

Teaching quality of the university (rankings, research fields, reputation, etc.)
Programs and courses they offer - Are they interesting for you? Will you learn something new?
Culture - A very important factor. Can you identify, adopt or at least live with the new culture you will encounter?
Language - Do you speak their language? How fast can you adopt to a new language? Are there any crash courses offered for a new language you will encounter?
Oh and a last important factor: Fun ! Studying as a postgraduate is something you should consider fun. The place should be fun, the people should be fun, the learning should be fun! You should be motivated to do this step not only to get a higher degree, but to broaden your mind.

Those factors should help you to decide which country you want to go, and of course which university you want to apply to. My first biggest concern was the language. Being fluent in English, French, German and Luxembourgian (oh yeah, we do have our own language!) I do speak more languages than most people speak. Nonetheless, most of these languages are useless in Asia. Learning a new language is still on my to-do, may it be Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, it doesn't matter. But one thing is clear: As postgraduate student in a different specialization than languages, I will not have the time to only focus on learning a new language. This made the point: I have to look out for an university which main teaching language is English and where most of the people in that city are able to communicate in it. This left me with the choices of the following countries: Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Indonesia and of course Singapore!

The factor of quality is always hard to determine and may be very subjective, yet a good start is the QS World Rankings, where also a special Asia ranking is available since a few yours. You can find it here and also a ranking for the IT / Engineering specialization here.

This clearly kicked out Indonesia,Taiwan and India of my places to go and left me with Hong Kong and Singapore.

I don't even consider discussing the fun factor of both cities. They surely can't be less exciting than Luxembourg.*

(* Note: This doesn't mean Luxembourg is boring, but if 450.000 people live on 2600sq.km compared to 4 million resp. 7 million people on less than a third of the same space, there must be much more variety in culture and lifestyle)

This left the decision to the offer of the different programmes. First of all, one important detail was that I wanted to start my studies in January 2011, which is the summer intake. Nearly no university in Hong Kong offered intakes for January apart from the Polytechnic University of Hong Kong. In Singapore my only choices were the National University of Singapore and the James Cook University. So my decision was to apply to all 3 of those universities and see were I get accepted. For a European it can be quite of a procedure to apply for those universities. I will blog more about this issue later, but one thing is clear, getting into a European university is so much easier and so less work :)

James Cook University Singapore

In the end I got accepted into all of those 3 universities. Considering the ranking, the James Cook University was way out of the league, plus the fact that it was an Australian university with a campus in Singapore, so not really Asian. So the decision was between PolyU and NUS.

Polytechnic University of Hong Kong

The PolyU only offered Electronic and Information Engineering in the January intake. The Information Engineering subjects are quite interesting, as they do really focus on a practical IT field, but still remain enough theoretical. However the Electronic Engineering subject, which are also mandatory, were too much focus on the actual design of electronic components. Which is for an IT guy like me, just too much about brazing and soldering.

National University of Singapore

So the best choice was definitely the National University of Singapore. They are currently ranked on the 3rd place of the Asian QS rankings. The programme that was most interesting for me, is the one offered by the Institute of System Science (ISS). A Master of Technology in Software Engineering, which is specialized on practical teaching and also very market-oriented. Actually you need two years of working experience to get admitted to this programme. A good reason for me to join this programme, since you not only study on your postgraduate, but furthermore may be able to meet working people, which could lead to whole new business opportunities.

In the end, I am very happy to go study in Singapore, and hope to have given you an insight of my decision making, and I hope I help those, who are still undecided where to go.

Keep posted to read more about immigration matters, university issues and hints and of course: life in Singapore.

Go to Singapore

Study Information Technology in Singapore?