Public Service Message
To all the Singaporean students out there who might want to do a PhD:
You should be aware that it is actually possible, and, if you aim low enough, not terribly difficult, to do a PhD in a US university without having to pay anything out of your own pocket. In the sciences and engineering, it’s not difficult to get a funded PhD offer even if you have an undergrad degree from a local university, so long as your grades and research record are good. (In the social sciences and humanities, it may be rather more difficult to gain admission — although once you are admitted, you are typically fully funded. The reasons for this are a bit complicated — feel free to contact me directly if you really want my take on this.) I feel that I had to say this somewhere public, because I’ve recently been encountering a fair number of students in JC or university (or in between) expressing surprise when I told them this. I have to say, I find it shocking that some of their so-called “mentors” in the local universities perpetuate their students’ ignorance of this fact by not informing them of it and instead encouraging them to take up PhD scholarships offered by government research agencies. Given that there are such “mentors” around, I thought I’d offer this small bit of countervailing opinion, however little read it turns out to be.
It’s not just PhDs — there are funded Masters courses in the US, even in the humanities. Please, before you sign any binding contract, talk to people in the field, and talk to as many people as you can find, not just your so-called advisors.
As an undergraduate in NUS, I was told nothing of funding options for graduate school in the US by my lecturers. In fact, I had no useful guidance or advice on going for any graduate school from them. (I had some advice but it was almost totally useless and I am glad that I had enough gumption as an undergraduate to discount them.) There was very little interest on the part of my professors in preparing their students for postgraduate studies. I didn’t know that accruing, as much as possible, undergraduate research experience was important for graduate school admission or that undergraduate research was like a kind of practical research internship. There was no summer undergraduate research programme as in many US universities.
When I inquired about the possiblity of performing some paid undergraduate research over the summer holidays, I was told by a professor that the department budget for hiring undergraduates to do research was ‘eliminated’ because of the recession and that any sort of position would have had to be an unpaid one. Money was tight and it was not something I could afford. I noted with grim irony that there was always plenty of money in funding scholarships for new foreign undergraduates in NUS. Later on, my indignation deepened when I found out that, in NUS and NTU, there had been summer programmes for undergraduate research for exchange students from certain US universities (not Ivy League). Ironically, I discovered this by perusing a notice board in the graduate school which I now attend. The exchange students were provided accomodation, travel expenses and a very decent allowance.
Most of my peers in NUS were unaware of the funding possiblities for graduate school. Hence, many of them discounted the option of going to graduate school either because they thought they cannot afford it or that they had few opportunities to explore the possibility of professional research. I believe that many many more local graduates could have gone on to graduate school if the universities had taken an active role in promoting undergraduate research or providing enough information about postgraduate options.
Comment by Fox — February 22, 2009 @ 12:16 am
Yup, it’s the same at NTU, at least judging by the students I’ve met from there.
Comment by twasher — February 22, 2009 @ 3:35 am
Fox —
You say your professors had little interest in preparing students for graduate school. But presumably you got into grad school on the strength of their letters of recommendation. I find this a little odd — if they would write glowing letters of recommendation, why would they not want to be helpful to you in other aspects?
Comment by twasher — February 22, 2009 @ 11:33 am
Writing a recommendation letter for an individual doesn’t take much time or effort. I’m not sure how glowing it was though. I got into 2 out of the 8 schools I applied to.
In other aspects, the university was indifferent to preparing its undergraduates for grad school.
Let me list out the difference between my current school Uni X and NUS:
1. The department in X conducts an undergraduate seminar to brief its students on how to get into graduate school; the department in NUS didn’t.
2. Professors in X with NSF grants are obliged to pay for undergraduate research with their grant money; professors in NUS are allocated a small separate budget if they mentor undergraduate research. However, they are not obliged to and it doesn’t affect their funding if they don’t want to.
3. There are summer research programmes in X; none in NUS. I spent my summers working on non-science stuff to earn money.
My NUS academic advisor told me to get good grades when I talked to him about going to grad school in my 2nd year of undergrad. That was the only piece of useful advice I got. There was no mention of the importance of undergraduate research experience, funding, the application process, which schools to aim for, chances of admission for international students, etc.
I learned about these things in a haphazard way on the internet and talking to seniors who had gone on to graduate school. Being a shy and timid person, I didn’t really press my advisor or my lecturers as hard as I should have.
Let me give you an example of the official difference. I applied for and received a financially substantial pre-graduate award from a government research agency. I didn’t learn about this award from my department or advisor but only because my girlfriend told me about it.
I was told that I was a ‘very good’ student by more than one of my professors. However, if that was the way they helped their ‘very good’ students, I’m afraid that I cannot help but feel very disappointed.
Comment by Fox — February 22, 2009 @ 4:38 pm
I understand how taking on a student for undergraduate research is a lot more time consuming than writing a LOR. But surely it’s not very time consuming to tell the student about opportunities for graduate funding overseas. I could probably cover the subject in about ten minutes. And add in another twenty minutes perhaps telling the student what he/she should do to get into graduate school.
What I don’t understand is the reason behind this institution-wide poor mentorship. Many of the professors in local universities got their PhDs overseas, where they would presumably have come into contact with good mentorship practices. Why then do they forget all that when they come to teach here? Or does Singapore somehow disproportionately attract people who prefer not to mentor students?
Comment by twasher — February 23, 2009 @ 12:08 pm
Is there a way for you to organize some kind of talk to the local undergrads in Sci and Engineering? To help clear things up for those intending to pursue further studies in the US?
I can help if you need, and I will be in Singapore sometime during the summer months (or late Spring).
Comment by takchek — February 23, 2009 @ 3:53 pm
Most students in local universities do not go on to graduate school. Hence, the administration might not believe that good mentorship is necessary. Of course, this becomes a chicken and egg problem. Many more students are very capable of going to graduate school if there were proper institution-wide mentorship and if they had been properly informed about their options.
No NUS professor gets any credit or benefit for helping more undergraduate students get into graduate school, or for that matter, a job. Most lecturers are utterly indifferent to the post-graduate fate of their students. There is no systematic incentive for that sort of mentoring. On the other hand, mentoring students in American universities does help in getting research grants (especially from NSF).
The social obligation to mentor students is so much weaker in Singapore because most students don’t have a choice. Most people are there because of the government tuition subsidy or because they are shipped in by the Singapore government from India or China. There is really no incentive to treat students nicely or make the effort that students make the best of their education.
Comment by Fox — February 24, 2009 @ 5:33 am
Fox,
I don’t get the impression that professors who mentor undergrads in the US do so because of NSF grants or because ‘the administration’ tells them to do so. My impression is that they simply see it as part of their duty to the education community. Certainly none of my mentors were funded by or intended to be funded by NSF. And I’ve continued corresponding with them after I graduated, even though such long-distance mentorship surely doesn’t earn them any social brownie points. It is, I think, more of a cultural norm thing for them rather than any hard systematic incentivisation. That’s why it puzzles me that this norm doesn’t exist in NUS, since the vast majority of NUS faculty did most of their education overseas, where they presumably should have picked up some of the cultural norms.
Comment by twasher — February 25, 2009 @ 1:46 am
I don’t think that the vast majority of the NUS faculty got their PhDs from US. A lot of them got their PhDs from Australia, China, UK, Germany, Russia, Switzerland, etc where postgraduate education can be quite different from that in the US.
And even if most of the faculty were educated in the US, the assumption that some of the American academic cultural norms would be transplanted is a strong one. After all, I don’t think that Singapore civil service mandarins are very liberal-minded despite many of them having been exposed to the liberal culture of the West in their undergraduate years.
As a result of the decline of student interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), there are many administrative initiatives in the US to encourage STEM majors. Hence, the environment is conducive to formal and informal mentoring. In Singapore, there is no such decline and even if there is such a decline, the slack can always be taken up by importing trained people. Thus, the obligation to be ‘nice’ is considerably weaker.
Comment by Fox — February 26, 2009 @ 6:47 am
Fox,
Good points. I wonder if there’s a correlation between having a US PhD and being a good mentor.
I suppose I was too optimistic to think that as a professor, as someone who’s gone through the struggles of making it in academia, one could not wilfully ignore the aspirations of keen young people. I feel very strongly on a personal front that since I am where I am only because of some very kind mentors, that I should pay it forward and help other keen young people along. Oh well.
Comment by twasher — February 26, 2009 @ 4:44 pm
I honestly don’t think that mentoring is strongly correlated with having a US PhD. It more likely to be correlated to the cultural impetus to value and develop human resources. In Singapore, where one of the prime economic policies has been to keep wages low, human resource development is not as high a high priority as the politicians/senior civil servants claim to be. Thus, we are willing to spend a lot of money importing foreign talents but are reluctant to set up programmes to nurture locals in science and engineering.
Comment by Fox — March 1, 2009 @ 3:31 am
I’ve mentored a number of JC students in Singapore over the years, and what I’ve come to realise is that it’s not the money they’re after.
It’s the prestige of having a scholarship. And when you’re 16-18 years old, that means a big deal to your peers, your parents and your relatives.
You can tell them about how PhD studies in the US are funded and all the other funding opportunities until you’re blue in the face, but they’d rather have a scholarship to boost their CVs instead.
Comment by origamiwolf — August 6, 2009 @ 9:24 am
origamiwolf,
The message was not directed at JC students but at local undergrads. I don’t expect JC students to have any coherent plans for PhD studies.
Comment by twasher — August 6, 2009 @ 2:07 pm
Neither do undergrads - the majority of them already have firm plans about their next career steps in their junior/senior years. Many of those deciding to go for the PhD make this decision in JC.
Comment by origamiwolf — August 6, 2009 @ 10:55 pm
origamiwolf,
That’s not true. Perhaps because of my work in Biopolis, I have met many undergrads from local universities who are considering PhDs but seem to think that the only option is an A*Star scholarship.
Comment by twasher — August 7, 2009 @ 4:15 am
Perhaps that’s true of the biological sciences, but not so in the case of engineering and physical sciences - FYPs in this area that I’ve mentored often have already decided upon their career path when they start their final year. Only in the last year or so, we started seeing more of them considering PhDs, and mainly because of the economic downturn. And even so, they would rather consider doing PhDs locally, and the most common reason I hear is because of family ties and obligations.
Comment by origamiwolf — August 8, 2009 @ 3:19 am
origamiwolf,
If more undergrads know early enough about what their PhD options are, then they can plan and make arrangements for family ties and obligations. When I was an undergrad in NUS, I knew many many people, who were perfectly capable of going for postgraduate studies, did not do so simply because they did not know what their options were. As a result, they exclude the option of doing postgraduate from their career plans.
One of my best friends in NUS, who was a reserve member of the Physics Olympiad team and extremely capable of working in R&D, went on to work in the civil service because he didn’t know his options well. By the time he considered postgrad work, he was burdened with marriage plans and other obligations.
I would personally say that the availability of such information was just horrible during my time in NUS.
Comment by Fox — August 8, 2009 @ 4:26 am
Is the information just lacking, or is it that undergrads choose to ignore it, thinking they know better?
When you’re an undergrad, you’re more likely to listen to your peers, rather than what some stuffy old prof tells you about future careers.
Comment by origamiwolf — August 8, 2009 @ 12:53 pm
“Is the information just lacking, or is it that undergrads choose to ignore it, thinking they know better?”
I think it was both but more of the first. It was clear to me that there was very little information available to undergrads on their postgraduate options and that whatever information was available was not coherently organized, disseminated and explained.
Compared to what my current school does for its undergraduates (read post #4), I can safely say that NUS has a lot of room to improve, assuming that it hasn’t changed much since I graduated.
Comment by Fox — August 8, 2009 @ 2:27 pm
origamiwolf,
I suspect that you may not have had your undergraduate education in one of our local universities.
Consider the following. Suppose you are an NUS undergrad who enjoys his/her studies and undergraduate very much. You think that there is something more to it and want to go for postgraduate and maybe a career in R&D. Where in NUS can you get information about the aforementioned?
Remember that many of the professors come from very different educational systems (UK, US, Germany, China, Russia, etc). They only have personal experience with their own country’s educational system. If you try to get your information from the professors, it is bound to be conflicting, confusing and not coherenly organized. Not only that, your professors may also try to sell you the A*STAR scholarship programme.
Comment by Fox — August 8, 2009 @ 2:39 pm