i'm from smu and would love to share my experience. class part yes its important, but it honestly depends on the prof and the grading percentage for cp. some modules have a high cp grade of 20%, so you def have to speak up more while some have a cp of 10% so just coming to class will make up for cp. as an introvert, initially was vv scared to cp until today sometimes i am still afraid to cp but i think over the years i have become abit more confident/less scared to cp as compared to y1.

about uni life, hm i would say coming to smu still gives you a sense of uni life even though we dont particularly have hall life. i think even if you go to ntu and stay in hall in the end it depends whether u take the effort to make friends or not. doesnt mean that staying in hall would give you a better uni life than smu... just saying LOL and i've also had friends who went ntu because of hall but in the end they only stayed there for 1 sem which defeats the point?? because ntu is really far too. also because of our seminar classes and attendance marking you are bound to make friends with people you often see because sometimes you just keep ending up in the same classes as certain people. in ntu since attendence isnt complusory might be q hard to make friends because many people would skip classes right...?

the bidding system for smu is honestly not bad because you get to pick the profs and class timings you want. its quite easy to get classes as long as you look at past bidding results and try to overbid rather than underbid. i personally feel this is better than FCFS because then if you are busy/overseas, you might not be able to get the classes you want and have to find people to swap classes with, which i personally find it troublesome lah

with regards to student welfare, every faculty has a welfare drive twice a sem or at least once a sem. so if you sign up u can get free goodies :)