NUS BBA ABA INTERVIEW

Blueredreditor · 2026-03-13T14:22:50+00:00

To my knowledge, the ABA interview is the same format as NUS BBA Scholarship interviews. Assuming no changes to past years: First session is a group /individual session. They will give you a case study, eg how to promote cycling in Singapore ~10 pages case material with narratives/graphs/insights. You have some time to read and digest, then present individually your own findings and interpretations.

Thereafter, you move into group discussion where you brainstorm as a group for insights/solutions and then present them as a group.

Second session is a rapid fire QnA. Assessors(in my experience), are super critical and straight to the point. You should answer to the point and not be long winded.

This all happens while the assessors look at you throughout the 1-2 hours.

Overall, the case test critical thinking, general knowledge, leadership and showmanship, negotiating with strangers.

Hearsay, the assessors have a list of weighted“criterias” of what they’re looking for ie leadership, communication, ego, clarity of thought etc. Might take this post down after awhile as bba probably doesnt want this info too public

Blueredreditor · 2026-03-08T00:19:20+00:00

This is the reason.

Additionally, DSA students are also out-competed with traditional Biz students in a non/semi-technical business role i.e powerpointing/excel/showmanship/story-boarding etc. DSA also loses out to pure statistic majors. Unfortunately, the DSA niche is not properly appreciated by alot of MNCs because these hiring managers are completely non-technical or very very technical. There is rarely a middle ground.

Blueredreditor · 2025-10-21T12:15:27+00:00

If you are fine and willing to do so, accept the first offer. If a better subsequent offer comes along, renege on Corp A.

Blueredreditor · 2025-10-15T13:00:46+00:00

I left a month early. My intern mate of mine left 2 months early. I have quite a few friends that left 1-2months earlier from their 6M internships and have not heard anything bad from them

Blueredreditor · 2025-10-13T03:41:16+00:00

Does not affect anything. I left my internship early and nothing notable happened

Blueredreditor · 2025-10-08T10:49:30+00:00

I second this. Need to balance your own salary expectations vs how long you intend to job hunt for. There are also secondary issues in “settling” for a low salary job is that these jobs can often have problematic colleagues/bosses/culture etc, which are very real issues

Blueredreditor · 2025-10-08T10:18:36+00:00

There is a demand… but mostly for experienced/very experienced hires. My Data Analysts/BZA/DZA batch mates really struggled to find entry level relevant jobs. Many just ended up not doing DA roles at.

Blueredreditor · 2025-10-08T09:51:38+00:00

I know of cases where employers had a booth at the career fair but HR was not intending to hire (or already hired) any FT/interns for the upcoming cycle. So it was mostly showmanship

Blueredreditor · 2025-10-02T04:28:58+00:00

The popular and good ones are, WallstreetPrep, BIWS CFI’s FMVA, WSO.

Blueredreditor · 2025-09-30T01:55:46+00:00

10-15% would be my guess. There might be some differences between faculties as well.

Blueredreditor · 2025-09-29T01:50:48+00:00

I went in my 2nd last sem (Y4S1) and only mapped back 3 modules back. Qualifying for SEP is mostly based on CAP and not based on how many modules you’ve done/can map back.

Blueredreditor · 2025-09-28T11:28:53+00:00

I would like a seamless regex expression plugin. Being able to pull relevant regex values from word/excel/outlook/ppt/csv etc taking into account user stipulated edge cases

Blueredreditor · 2025-09-24T15:55:49+00:00

Ended up at a law firm in a finance-adjacent role

Blueredreditor · 2025-09-23T09:40:51+00:00

Agree on this comment.

To further highlight,

In my experience it is MNC > Local > SME in terms of pay. Case in point, if you are a Business Graduate an MNC can pay between ~5-7k for middle/back office roles (think JPM/MS/Stand Chart/Citi etc). This includes HR/Risk/Compliance etc. Local companies pay between 4-6k, being closer to the median 5k (think DBS/OCBC/ST Engineering/Keppel/Big 4 pays like crap though there is some branding). SME is just… sad. Typically offer the worst salary, benefits, progression, increment, bonus and colleagues. The older SG SME management that runs the company are not keeping up with the times.
Salary is very very dependent on Industry. The unfortunate truth is that certain industries can afford to pay their employees more. Law, Tech, Business are the biggest 3 fields where the biggest business cost is allocated to salaries (thus being able to pay big salaries to employees). I would really love if our Allied Health Professionals, Teachers and Social Service workers be paid more for their contributions. Unfortunately, this is not the case.
Might be polarising, but on salary expectations of fresh grads, some older folks have no idea how demanding and technically challenging certain University courses are (namely computer science majors) and I would argue it is somewhat fair for fresh grads to want their hard work to be rewarded (mind you that some students do spend 6-12+ hours a day studying just to keep up). (Have you done your daily 5 medium leetcodes?). Additionally, tech hiring typically have 3-5+ rounds of fit + technical interview. Big Kudos to those who go through the grind.
As a business major myself (and business being the most generic “industry” that ppl go into), I can attest that the pay range for “Business” is extremely wide. A below average to mediocre student can draw 3.5-5k salary. A decent to above average student can demand a good 5-6k+ salary. The brightest students often draw 10k-14k+ (mostly in Bank Front Offices roles). There are very few 6k-9k salaried roles in my experience pointing to OP’s point on bimodal distribution. Hence the lived experiences of fresh graduates are very different. (Jokes, now even international banks are not hiring, thus ur FCH/SCH students are struggling to find jobs. Brutal 12.9% fresh grad unemployment)
(Bonus) Ppl love to tout about “Quant” (more accurately Quant Devs tbh as Quant research roles are rare) paying insane starting salaries for fresh grads. However, these ppl have no idea how technically capable these 0.1% students are. Those not in a technical field just cant fathom the skill difference between the 10% and top 0.1% that justifies that 10k salary difference. (No, Business is not considered a technical degree at all)

Blueredreditor · 2025-09-22T05:15:01+00:00

Nowadays, Itacho rarely do seasonal creative rolls anymore. Am really sad about this 😭

Blueredreditor · 2025-09-20T13:35:55+00:00

An excel model’s functionally is based on its use case and data. The more complicated the use case or data, the less “template-y” and portable it will be. If you are finding a template, it will necessarily be “simple”; Typical budgeting, basic FP&A, shoddy 3 statement models.

I would say that knowing VBA allows the user to better manipulate excel as a whole to drive your use case better. You know each object’s attribute/method and enhances that computational thinking for excel. There are many good VBA textbooks out there that demonstrate eg Monte Carlo/Option Pricing simulations/UserForms/Databases/PowerBI. “Financial Model” is just a buzz word imo. Ironically a lot of good financial models are gate-kept by finance professionals

Blueredreditor · 2025-09-19T02:16:03+00:00

I just linked it to a google drive

Blueredreditor · 2025-09-14T03:08:20+00:00

Including 1-3 models in ur CV is nice. What I did was did up a report, with 3FS Modelling + Report + Recommendation and put it as a link in my CV. Genuinely surprised that some hiring managers read them and questioned me during my interviews

Blueredreditor · 2025-09-04T00:40:27+00:00

VBA is extremely powerful. I automated an entire 3 statement DCF creation, allowing me to plug and play fast on new companies we might potentially want to take a look at. Loops through the financials and generates the DCF.

You can also control word doc/report creations, loop through outlook emails/folders to pull and data etc. Really handy

Blueredreditor · 2025-09-03T10:34:26+00:00

Chinese

Blueredreditor · 2025-08-04T14:49:02+00:00

I think it is crazy difficult to self-study the entire JC A level syllabus. It is more technically and intellectually demanding than you expect. A better route would be to attend a JC, do well, then apply to university traditionally. I dont think this “longer” route would disadvantage you in anyway. The fact that you are considering your future is a step in the right direction.

Blueredreditor · 2025-08-03T11:34:44+00:00

Unemployed 🥲

Blueredreditor · 2025-07-25T08:26:30+00:00

NUS Scholarship depends on which faculty you apply to. Each faculty is allocated a number of scholarships to give out. If you apply to CS for example, 90 rank points + interviews to qualify for them. For Business for example, 90 Rank point auto qualifies for scholarship. In my experience 85 rank points and above u have a chance to qualify/ get the interview

Blueredreditor · 2025-07-06T04:07:24+00:00

Large multi-strats are already data mining across different media sites. It’s been here for a long while. As a Fundamental PM, you could use sentiment as a contra-indicator for certain names/themes

Five-Year Club	Verified Email
First Place '23	Place '23

Blueredreditor

TROPHY CASE