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SINGAPORE: Singapore's fourth public university, the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), will start its undergraduate admissions exercise on Saturday. This will be the first in a series of admissions exercises to select students for the university's first intake in April 2012.
Students enrolled in SUTD can expect to complete their studies in three and a half years, which is faster than the four years on average required for an equivalent course either at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) or at the other public universities in Singapore.
And with an April start date, students can expect to graduate about eight months earlier than their peers. But the university says students will not lose out in terms of course content. Students will graduate with a Bachelor's degree in one of the four areas – Architecture & Sustainable Design; Engineering Product Design; Engineering Systems & System Design; and Information Engineering & Design.
The site of the former ITE Dover campus will be SUTD's interim campus. By early 2015, SUTD will move into its permanent campus at Upper Changi.
Tuition fees for Singapore citizens in the first intake will be around S$11,000 per academic year at SUTD. Subsequent batches will be expected to pay higher fees. Once facilities at the permanent campus are built, students would be expected to bear their fair share and fees will go up.
The university wants to create a new kind of engineer, one that is focused on design and real-world application. Its curriculum will reflect that.
Students will be given four weeks each year to take up any course they like outside of the main curriculum, or they can teach if they want to. Students will have a large say in what they want to do during their Independent Activity Periods, and courses could include wine-tasting, for example.
There will be regular exchanges with partner university, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Students will also spend at least one of their two 18-week summer breaks interning with companies. Already, big names like Google and Hewlett-Packard have agreed to come onboard.
Provost of SUTD, Professor Chong Tow Chong, said: "It's important for them (students) to spend some time outside the classroom, so that they can really think about or define problems which the real world is facing, and they can solve these problems."
It all adds up to an intensive experience from the word 'go'.
Professor Thomas Magnanti, president of SUTD, said: "The first three semesters are taken one right after another, without a summer break. By doing that, the students will be more prepared than they would have for a typical freshman year for an internship, and an internship experience."
On the initial tuition fees of around $11,000, Professor Magnanti said the expense is due to the fact that "a science and technology education is very expensive". Students are also paying for the smaller student-faculty ratio of 11 to one.
Professor Magnanti estimates that the S$11,000 is about one-fifth of what an equivalent degree at the MIT would cost. Permanent Residents are expected to pay around 20 percent more, and international students 60 percent more.
The admissions exercise will close on April 8. It is open to students who have passed the 'A' level exams last year or earlier. It is also open to polytechnic students who will graduate this year or earlier.
This means that this initial admissions exercise will attract mainly male students who have to go through two years of National Service. Another admissions exercise will be held next March, again targeted at males graduating from the junior colleges and polytechnics in 2011; and again in October 2011 for everyone else planning to enter the university in 2012.
Up to 100 scholarships will be made available to selected top students for the first intake.
An open house will be held at the Swissotel Stamford this weekend. Students and parents will be able to meet with members of the faculty. More information may be found at www.su.edu.sg
- CNA/ir
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