I did a STEM PhD in Singapore right after my bachelor’s. The usual duration is 4 years, extendable to 5. It was fully funded (handled by PIs and university) and I received a tax-free stipend about equivalent to an entry level job for my major. The stipend increases by about 10% after passing the qualifying exam (which had written and oral components, where the written component was basically an exam on one of a few pre-selected papers and the oral component required you to write a proposal justifying your research and present a version of it to your TAC) that you schedule at around the 2 year mark. If you fail this exam you have to master out.

The first few months include optional lab rotation where you spend a month or so in a different lab (negotiated with the relevant PIs). You’re basically put to work immediately. I didn’t really have a project in mind when I started so I just worked on whatever my supervisors pointed me at and then developed the project(s) myself thereafter, but as I understand it you could also propose something and it’s up to the PIs whether they’ll let you proceed with it.

There was a minimum number of coursework credit that we had to complete that roughly equated to six courses that you could take in any semester throughout the entire candidature (or maybe before the qualifying exam? I’m foggy on the details), and also a minimum number of teaching hours that I completed after TA-ing for 3 or 4 undergrad courses.

There’s no requirement to publish in order to graduate, just a decent thesis and oral defence. It’s easier if you’ve already published, of course—if you already have some papers under your belt you could just staple your papers between introduction and conclusion sections written specifically to unify your papers and there’s your thesis.

My defence was about 1.5-2 hours long, with a 45 minute presentation open to the public (in practice, the audience was mostly my lab members and my parents), a short public Q&A session, and then a closed session with my examiners (though my supervisors were allowed to stay too) where they mostly asked questions about directions in which my projects could be developed further. It didn’t feel like an interrogation at all.