1. DECISION MAKING
What courses were you considering, and what were the factors that personally shaped your decision?
I only considered going for life sciences related courses. All along, I knew I wanted something more than just life sciences as well. I didn’t want to spend my life in a lab doing experiments. Though Lab experiments are still essential, I still prefer to look at existing data and extrapolate from there before researchers validate the findings. By being able to predict processes and results, the research process can be sped up. Back when I was in JC, Computing was not popular yet nor was it offered so I didn’t take Computing. With no background, I was curious to find out how interesting Computing can be. As such, I decided to study computational biology at NUS as NUS is the only local university in Singapore that offers such a programme at the undergraduate level (which I am very thankful for).
My parents were pretty supportive of my decision so long as I don’t regret it, which I deeply appreciate. As for my friends, they were intrigued when they first heard about the course as they never knew it existed. This is understandable as the cohort was(and it still is) pretty small(11 for my batch), with a yearly average of less than 20 freshmen. This could be attributed to the low application rate as prospective students will tend to be better either only in Computing or Life Sciences. Also, it was rare for students to google ‘Computing and Biology’ together, thus further reducing the awareness of the course. However, as the sciences gradually embrace computing, more people are applying to the course.
2. TEACHING CURRICULUM
What’s your course structure like?
For the first two years, there will be probability and statistics, algorithm design and some programming languages. There will also be organic chemistry and life sciences lessons, with one module dedicated to ‘wet’ laboratory experiments for us to better appreciate life sciences (‘wet’ laboratory experiments are typical science experiments that use equipment such as the pipette, burette etc whilst ‘dry’ laboratory experiments are experiments that involve the analysing and predicting of data using the computer).
There’s at least one lecture every week per module (Math and Science modules will each have 2 lectures per week per module). There’ll also be weekly tutorials for almost all modules. For computing modules, some will have coding lab sessions either once a week or once every fortnight.
For my course, there’s a common curriculum for all students for the first two years. However, as it’s the same for almost all university courses, we are able to select the modules that we want to take per semester (usually 5 modules but it is possible to cram more modules, subject to one’s preference and the ability to cope). If you choose to cram more modules within the first few years, it’ll be less taxing on you when you are in the final year of the course. You will be able to unlock more modules in the upper levels of the course faster. Besides, there’s the S/U option, which serves to help you evaluate your ability and interests. Not only that, as you progress to the upper levels of the course, you tend to gain more experience, and thus I feel it’ll be better to use the time in the upper levels to focus on the Final Year internship or the Final Year Project.
There are reading weeks which are 1 week before our midterms and finals. Midterms and finals will span across 2 to 3 weeks.
What is a day in the life of a student in your course & school like?
As my course consists of modules taught across faculties, we have to travel to the different parts of the campus for the different modules. However, it’s good in a sense that we are able to experience the teaching styles of different faculties. It’ll be good if we are able to make friends with students from various faculties, but we have to know that it may be hard for us to meet up and maintain this friendship as we will mostly be studying different modules. The group of friends you have plays a huge role in motivating each in pulling through the 4 years of learning together, which can be mentally draining. Regarding the gender ratio, there is no clear trend over the past few years. My batch is predominantly male, but the batch after mine had more females. The current year 2 batch is the most balanced of all.
We usually spend about 3-5 hours in school attending lessons everyday if the lessons are spread out well and it can go up to 8 hours if we choose to cram modules. As the selection of modules is more flexible in university, classes may start as early as 8am or even as late as 6pm.
What is the format of your assessments/exams like?
Regarding assignments (it may be different now due to remote learning), for Math and Statistics, all the assignments were individual assignments. For life sciences, professors like to include some quizzes and assignments. For computing modules, there tend to be more group assignments. For midterms and finals, there is usually 1 paper per module but some modules may not have any as they are substituted with assignments. The midterms and finals will still take up a large weightage in determining the final grade.
During pre-covid period, all exams were taken in person. Now, the majority of the assessments are online, only one Computing module was taken in person in the lab. Regarding the examination format, for Math and Statistics, all were open-ended. For Life Sciences and Chemistry, mostly were open-ended questions, with MCQ for quite a number of modules and only selected few modules have essays. Lastly for Computing, the midterms and finals were mostly written and some had MCQ. Practical exams are very common too, in the form of labs.
How heavy would you say the workload for your course is compared to an average student in your university?
I would say that it’s rather heavy, especially in the first two years unless you are naturally good in different university subjects at the university level. It may sound exciting to take modules from different faculties, but Biology and Computing modules are either extremely content-heavy or require a lot of time.
It’s normal to feel lost as they are not able to see the relation among the different aspects of Computational Biology. There are only 3-4 modules that are bioinformatics related, which is exactly what Computational Biology is about, with the rest being building blocks. This sense of confusion is made worse when we eventually enter the workforce as we lack understanding of what the workforce is expecting of us. We are indeed equipped with the knowledge and the skills, but we lack the exposure and practice in combining the different aspects together.
The workload may be rather heavy, but once we are able to integrate the different aspects of the course together, it’ll give us a huge advantage over people who major only either in Life Sciences or Computing. Besides, we’ve many more choices as to what modules to study on a particular day. For example, if we don’t feel like studying Math there’s always Computing or Life Sciences. We also do not have to bid for much lower-level modules as we have a very strict set of pre-requisite modules to take and thus the coordinators will assist us by pre-allocating the required modules to us.
Are there specialisations within your degree? If so, when do you have to choose your specialisation, and what specialisation have you chosen?
We can choose to specialise as early as Year 3 Semester 1 and there’s no formal declaration (once we decide on a specialisation we can immediately select courses based on that specialisation). There are 3 specialisations that we can choose from: Computing, Math & Statistics and Life Sciences. Personally, I chose Computing as I feel that it’s much easier to pick up Biology domain knowledge as compared to Computing. As for Math and Statistics, it is fundamental to computing but I’m not currently as interested in pursuing the theoretical aspects as compared to the practical aspects of Computing.
As much as we discuss the specialisation, it will not be reflected on our graduation certificates as the certificate will only mention that we are awarded a Bachelor of Science in Computational Biology.
3. PERSONAL EXPERIENCE / PREFERENCES
What are some thing(s) you didn’t know/expect about the course before starting?
I came in with no expectations. I only read the description of the course mentioning that it’s an interdisciplinary course. Also, back then with almost no seniors to talk to, it was very hard to get a clear picture of the course.
Are there many people who switched out of your course?
There has been a running joke among the seniors that someone will drop out every year (Due to the difficulty and past trends). In recent years, however, more people are transferring in every year as people are probably growing increasingly curious about the computational side of biology.
4. CAREER PROSPECTS
What are the career prospects like for your course?
Some of them went into research institutes such as A*STAR and Bioinformatics Institute. The batch above us mostly went into tech and one of them is currently pursuing a degree in forensics. My batch are mostly in research or tech.
Did you have any internships/work experience related to your career? What was the experience like?
Yes (I am currently on an internship now). I chose to take up a 5-month internship as I value real-world industrial experience more. During the three and a half years of my course, we have little to none real-world experience and all we heard was people telling us ‘Computational Biology is in high demand.’, but we don’t see many companies hiring computational biologists. This could partly be because we didn’t have Final-Year Internships back then, so most companies didn’t know that we have local graduates holding a degree in Computational Biology (most job descriptions are targeted at Master’s or PhD).
The school provided us a list of internship companies but there were only 2 (since my batch was the first batch to go for an internship) and they were both pharmaceutical companies (with one being unresponsive). As I didn’t see myself going into the pharmaceutical industry in the future, I sourced for my own internship. It was tough as companies were not really actively looking out for a bioinformatics intern until one day I chanced upon Illumina, a biotechnology company and ended up doing a software-related internship.
I had to submit a monthly log with my reflection and at the end of the internship, there’s a final report and presentation to the school. My supervisor is also required to submit an evaluation regarding my performance which constitutes about 40% of the final grade.
There have been ups and downs throughout my internship journey. The original project that was meant to last the entire internship was deemed to be confidential about two weeks into the start of my internship, throughout which I was luckily still onboarding and assigned ad hoc tasks instead. I was subsequently posted to a department that I am currently working at now.
The company culture is welcoming, warm and helpful. They treat me as an equal and trust me with working on projects like a full-time staff.
5. STUDENT LIFE
What were your CCAs?
In the Science faculty, I was part of the Science Volunteer Corps (similar to Interact Club in secondary school) for 2 years. From my second year onwards, we started a Computational Biology Network. For a start, we just wanted to give the juniors the support we’d have wanted. Such as providing knowledge on internships, undergraduate research opportunities and organising talks to share on the paths available for the juniors in their 4 years. As the cumulative size for the all batches is so small (less than 50), it’s quite easy to organise gatherings for everyone to bond with one another.
What other opportunities (overseas exchanges etc) have you made use of in university?
I personally did not want to go for an overseas exchange. It’s possible to plan for overseas exchange but the pool of universities is rather small as most of them do not have the modules we have to take in our year 3. For extra-curricular activities, I was recruited into a project known as Tiny Tinkers, which aims to encourage children to adopt computational thinking (solving problems in steps). I also took part in a water lifesaving competition with my friends. I’d recommend joining a sport or a club as you can meet people from different faculties. But it all boils down to what you want out of your uni life.
Any parting words or advice for juniors?
Apply for more internships and take up more courses be it before, during and after university. It’s less to find out what you like and more to help you find out what you don’t like. We are still young and still have time to explore. Also, if you are still unsure on whether you want to take Math, Computing or Life Sciences, you should still first apply to Computational Biology and find out from there. Once you are ready, it’s not so hard to transfer to your preferred course without having to worry about missing out too much.