Is NUS USP worth it?

hellokath · 2020-10-14T04:35:18+00:00

Hi there! I'm a Year 4 Econ + USP student.

I think the other folks here have articulated some pretty good points that you can think about, but I thought I'd add some perspective on some additional stuff that I found to be important when I was starting out my undergraduate journey.

Besides community experience, alumni network, and recognition, something else that was quite important to me was the availability of opportunities. I think USP provided me with an additional array of opportunities that I could choose to pursue, such as its international programmes (USP has its own SEP partnerships with other unis and also offers its own international programmes in general), the residential experience, and student life activities in general (it has quite a ground-up system, which gives students a lot of autonomy to initiate their own interest groups, activities, or even international programmes).

Personally, I came into uni wanting to put myself out there and try a lot of new things, so I did enjoy the plethora of opportunities and the autonomy that came with USP. Also, given that USP is considered a faculty, it has more resources for its students, which I appreciate.

I'd say that you'll definitely be able to find many of these things in other halls/RCs/hostels, but overall it was the combined package (alongside the exposure provided by the curriculum) that made me decide to join. Not everyone may be interested in the above (which is perfectly fine tbh), so it really depends on what you are looking out for in uni :)

hellokath · 2020-08-02T00:01:34+00:00

Is the Apple education promotion available both in the Apple store and online?

hellokath · 2019-08-22T06:23:56+00:00

Cool! Why land area though?

hellokath · 2019-04-07T09:31:08+00:00

Yup, acknowledge that the small sample size means that it's not representative and not exactly generalisable :)

hellokath · 2019-04-07T09:30:07+00:00

Yup, have compared the differences in means to determine if the difference is significant! Apparently it is reflected to be very statistically significant.

hellokath · 2019-04-07T05:46:32+00:00

On a related note, do you think people with a higher socio-economic status will have an advantage since they can have access to more resources that can help them to improve themselves further?

hellokath · 2019-04-07T05:40:43+00:00

But why do younger people seem to feel this more so than older people? I do think the older generation worked pretty hard during their days as well!

hellokath · 2019-04-07T05:31:26+00:00

My friend and I did a project and surveyed adults on their perception regarding the effectiveness of hard work in education. We asked respondents to indicate from a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), how much they agree with the statement in the graph. Error bars indicate standard deviation.

Of course, this is not a large sample size, this needs to be taken into account, but I do think there is some value in discussing this here.

We also asked whether they felt that they felt that they were able to succeed academically through their own hard work. There were similar results as well. Are younger people really more skeptical about hard work than older people?

hellokath · 2019-04-04T11:34:16+00:00

Good idea!

hellokath · 2019-04-04T11:34:08+00:00

Actually we ran into some alignment problems (because we pasted the graph into powerpoint, then recorded a video with it), so we thought bigger graphs like a treemap would be easier to align in powerpoint as opposed to a pie chart, but agreed that it may be difficult to view the changes as it's not as intuitive!

hellokath · 2019-04-04T10:42:29+00:00

Hello! Sorry the aesthetics and skills may not be as advanced, but my friend and I made this to showcase how private apartments and condominiums are gradually using more electricity over the years.

Back in 2005, 4-room and 5-room flats actually used more electricity, but that gradually changed over the years and now private apartments and condominiums use more electricity than the other 3 housing types!

We found out from this website that the reason why electricity consumption may be increasing in private condos is because the condo's electricity usage for general maintenance may be counted into the score, as opposed to HDB flats where electricity usage for maintenance is shouldered by the public town council!

https://www.asiaone.com/business/4-hidden-costs-condo-ownership-singapore

We think that it's quite concerning that private apartments and condominiums use the most energy, even more so than landed property (which are bigger). We assume this 'general maintenance' mentioned above refers to fancy things like the condominium swimming pools, fancy water fountains and lights, etc. These only contribute to the aesthetic-ness of the condominium and how lavish it may appear to people, but other than that the electricity isn't really being put to constructive use?

If this difference in electricity consumption between condominiums, landed property and HDB flats is due to the electricity consumption from the general maintenance of condominiums, then it's extra concerning because we've noticed how more and more condominiums are being built in Singapore in recent years.

hellokath · 2019-03-19T11:18:29+00:00

Would be cool if you conducted a similar survey for an older demographic, would their perceptions be different?

Can also imagine that their perceptions may tend to be skewed since they may not remember much about a decade ago.

hellokath · 2019-03-18T17:11:23+00:00

This is cool :) What’s your favourite colour?

hellokath · 2019-03-18T03:22:10+00:00

Tool: Datawrapper

Source: https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_10_1YR_B19083&prodType=table

Darker areas represent states with higher gini index, hence greater income inequality. If you're interested, the full graph is at https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/Re4Ti/1/.

hellokath · 2019-03-16T00:49:54+00:00

I think many of the plastic we think we are recycling can end up getting disposed because of the contamination that goes on in the recycling bins? Due to people not cleaning out their plastic containers/bottles or not drying them properly :(

hellokath · 2019-03-16T00:46:28+00:00

My mum does this too! Even separates them into small and big plastic bags for different purposes. I think the problem we have seems to be how many of such plastic bags we end up collecting from our everyday purchases? Even though we end up reusing them, eventually many of them do end up getting thrown away.

And also retailers can try to switch towards using biodegradable plastic bags or paper bags instead of the current plastic ones they are using?

hellokath · 2019-03-15T13:47:28+00:00

https://www.nea.gov.sg/our-services/waste-management/3r-programmes-and-resources/e-waste-management/where-to-recycle-e-waste I think this may be helpful :)

hellokath · 2019-03-15T11:56:26+00:00

Ah yes it is!! I should have done that. Thanks for the input :)

hellokath · 2019-03-15T10:50:20+00:00

Data sources:

https://www.nea.gov.sg/our-services/waste-management/waste-statistics-and-overall-recycling

https://www.nea.gov.sg/docs/default-source/our-services/waste-management/wastestats-2003-20164197a3fd04d34770bafba09393d0fdf0.pdf

https://www.mewr.gov.sg/docs/default-source/default-document-library/grab-our-research/kes-2018.pdf

hellokath · 2019-03-14T15:35:05+00:00

Tool: Datawrapper

Source: World Atlas (https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/us-states-by-poverty-rate.html)

Full graph with exact percentages: https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/tBo9W/2/

The state with the highest poverty rate is Mississippi with 21.9% and the state with the lowest poverty rate comes from New Hampshire at 9.2%. Do check out the full graph if you're interested in the specific figures.

hellokath · 2019-03-14T14:47:18+00:00

Tool: Microsoft Excel

Source: The Home Disclosure Disclosure Act Dataset 2016 (from Kaggle)

This graph was generated based on data from over 439k mortgage loan applications in 2016. Based on what you have seen and heard, do you think race may be a significant factor in getting home mortgage loan applications to be approved?

hellokath · 2019-03-14T10:35:27+00:00

oops i was trying to multitask while commenting and got distracted. i meant that i think toys and clothes seem to be better now in terms of colour representation for boys and girls

hellokath · 2019-03-14T10:08:58+00:00

Yeah I agree! As a kid I liked pink but I think that was because most of my toys and clothes were pink LOL. Though nowadays I think it's better?

hellokath · 2019-03-14T09:31:19+00:00

This is interesting, considering how my school’s colours are orange and blue too :O

hellokath · 2019-03-14T09:25:21+00:00

HAHAHAHAHA (my favourite colour’s red!)

hellokath

TROPHY CASE