A guide to easily score that elusive A / A+ in NUS

How to do well in NUS? How to score that A grade?

I've never performed well in secondary school and JC. My prelim grades back then almost spelt "success" (got grades like Subpasses, U's, C's and E's).  However, in NUS, I graduated with a first class honors degree. I was even nominated as the reserve valedictorian during the commencement ceremony.

As you can see, my CAP had been on the rise after year 1, partly because I got to select the electives of my choice, and partly because I mastered the technique to doing well in NUS examinations in my later years. I hereby debunk the myth of some who say that NUS semesters get tougher as the years go by. Let me share with you my techniques with I had learnt over the years, on how to easily score an A grade in NUS.

But first, let me state the things I see students do which I personally feel do not help at all. Let me call them placebos.


The placebos to doing well

Disclaimer: This section contains many of my personal opinions and you may not share the same opinion as I do. If you disagree with me at any point of time, feel free to comment below and I will be in contact with you shortly.

1. Buying all recommended textbooks by the lecturer

Personally, I feel that textbooks are useless, and they suck away your time and resources just trying to demarcate the portions which are in the scope of the module and which are outside the syllabus. Look, lecturers will not test anything outside what they have taught. They won't teach you to fish and test you to cook. Rather, they would teach you to fish for a small fish, and they would test you on how to fish for a big one. You just apply the same concepts which they have taught you on a bigger problem. That is what examinations are all about.

I once bought a textbook during my first semester for an open-book examination. Guess what, the examination required me to know all my concepts well, I did not even have the time to open a book and read any chapter. But I won't say the textbook for that module was completely useless. Having that textbook sitting on my table made me a tad calmer knowing that I have all the information I needed sitting right here on my desk. What a placebo that was.

What I recommend instead is to print out the lecturer's notes, and make additional notes on them. Take note especially when the lecturer mentions of certain "more important" topics, these are hints for you.

2. Getting hold of senior's notes

This is prevalent among the freshmen who rampantly obtain and share seniors' notes with their OG mates. At times, I feel that this behavior may be to earn acceptance points from your fellow OG mates or just to farm "thank you's" from others. While senior's notes may be useful to some extent (you get to know the lecture slides a few weeks earlier provided you read ahead, or some past year solutions which may aid you in your revision), I would rather you remain cautious because of the following:

First, the syllabus may change. In many modules, lecturers for semester 1 and semester 2 for the same module may be different. Even so, they may make revision to the course syllabus over the years as technology and information changes. So in my opinion, the lecture notes provided by your current lecturer in the IVLE workbin will be sufficient and are the most updated versions you can ever have.

Second, your senior may not always be correct. Please take those annotations and scribbles with a pinch of salt. Don't absorb it like a sponge, or before you know it, you'll be committing the same mistakes as your senior had done.

Having said that, look out for the past year solutions or masteringphysics answer keys in your seniors' notes package as that would be the most valuable things you can get from them.

3. Forming study groups

Okay, this section will be very very subjective. It is possible to benefit from study groups, provided your study group do not have any of the following toxic characteristics.

First, a toxic study group is one that digresses too much. A little small talk to keep yourselves from falling asleep is sufficient, but if conversations take up more than 10% of the time, you might just be wasting your time.

Second, if your study group comprises students from a huge range of capabilities, the brighter students may actually find themselves answering questions which are already too basic for them. This results in a one-sided benefit.

Rather, I would recommend you to form small study groups of students with similar capabilities. This would result in an insightful discussion.

The 4 golden rules to do well in NUS

1. Understand your assessor

This is the probably the most important skill to pick up. During the first lecture, the professor will usually go through the grading criteria and how the module is assessed. Take note of this.

During the course of the module, take note of the following with regards to your assessor:

• Does your assessor pay attention to detail?
• For project presentations, does your assessor prefer technical details or the presentation towards the audience
• For fluffy modules, does your assessor like 
• In general, what do you think your assessor wants?

Allow me to illustrate my point with actual personal experiences.

During my module HR2002, Prof Lowe mentioned during the first lecture that 100% of the assessments will be graded by our tutors. Hence during every tutorial session, I attempted to find out the style of my tutor - Mr Yao. From the tutorial sessions, I found out that Mr Yao preferred novel ideas, arguments which were not conventional and challenged the 'normal textbook answers'. Furthermore, when I did past year questions and emailed Mr Yao for his feedback, I could tell from his feedback that he preferred examples as illustrations instead of proving a point. Hence from the various clues I gathered during the entire semester, I knew exactly the style of my essay to write during my finals.

Engineering professors in general tend to like graphs, figures and data. Therefore when I wrote reports for engineering design modules such as BN2203 or BN3101, I tried to perform a greater variety of experiments to generate more graphs, figures and data. These data should also be presented in a consistent (colours, font, size) and neat manner across your report.

Some professors are particularly fond on references. For example, during my module GEH1049 / GEK1900, I found this to be true when the lecturers kept emphasizing the importance of references to boost credibility. The moment I realized this, I started throwing in more references to cite, even if it were citing things which were already well known during the weekly group reports. Anything citeable was referenced and I started to notice the improvement in grades of the weekly reports.

Aesthetics is important to all types of assessors. Ensure that your reports are formatted nicely and consistently. The flow in your report should be smooth with nicely categorized sections. Your presentation slides should not be too wordy but to highlight important points. (Engineering professors tend to prefer more details and words, but keep them concise).

Note that these are just general criteria and does not apply across all modules. To summarize this whole section:

Give your assessor an answer in a way you think he likes it to be.

2. Having sufficient practice

As the saying goes, practice makes perfect. As cliche as it sounds, this is very true. I learnt it the hard way during my module MA1506. I never really liked mathematics, and studying this pure mathematics module was a nightmare to me. Looking at the confusing mathematical symbols just made my head spin. Getting straight to the point, while studying for the finals for this module, I simply just looked through the tutorial questions and the answers. Yes I understood the methods and I agreed with the sample solutions. I felt good after that as everything just seemed so familiar. However during the finals, I got stuck at many parts, simply because I've forgotten many simple concepts like the "completing the square" concept.

Yes it was easy to see the solutions and agree with the method, but it was a completely different thing being presented with the question and me coming up with the solution. The entire thought process is different. For essay-based examinations, it is good to still practice past year questions even though those questions will not be tested again. This is to practice your thought process and essay planning engines.

Ensure that you practice by re-doing the tutorial problems without looking at the answers. Work your answers out on pen and paper and literally simulate the "examination conditions" of working on the problems. If you practice diligently (every single tutorial question and past year questions), I can guarantee that you will never fall below a B+ grade.

3. Attending the lectures

Attend every lecture and pay attention to your lecturers. Do not care if your friends are talking, surfing facebook, or discussing the latest KPop news. The very reason you came for the lecture was to listen to the lecturer. If you aren't interested in the lecture, then you should not be there in the first place.

Sometimes, listening to the lecturers can give an insight into their field of interest and the topics which they are passionate about. Note them down as these will undoubtedly appear in your examinations! An example would be during my module BN4203. I could tell from Dr Yu's lectures that he was especially passionate when he talked about the benefits which exoskeletons could bring about to humans. Hence, I made it a point to study the benefits of exoskeletons, their pros and cons and yes, it was tested in the final examinations.

At times, lecturers also do drop hints by letting us know what would definitely be tested. Note all these down as well.

4. Have a study plan

Everyone has minimally a week to study thanks to our good ol reading week. I recommend studying for the latest subjects first. For example, if your final examinations are in the order A, B, C, D, then study subject D first and A the last. This will ensure that the things which you studied for remains fresh in your mind with minimum distractions from other modules.

The way I study is to do the following for each module (in chronological order)

1. Read through the lecture notes once. If the notes contains examples, just read through the solutions to the examples. Mentally take note of the thought process on solving these examples.
2. Re-do your tutorials. Do not look at the answers while doing. Any unfamiliar concepts or your weak topics should surface at this point. Go back to the notes for these topics and study them especially well.
3. Do past year papers. By now, you should be confident with your general concepts and ready to take on the past year papers.
4. (Optional) For the extra nerds who aims to score a better grade than an A+ or the weaklings who need extra practice, search online for related questions and work on them. Just FYI, I never achieved this step, ever.

This entire process should take you 2-4 days depending on how much time you have per module. Plan this well!

Conclusion

To be frank, the process would not be easy. But if you follow this guide, I can guarantee you with 95% assurance that you will receive your preferred grade. (Tips: Use S/U wisely and have a positive attitude)

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