Not all courses are equal:

GEN:
Many majors are required, due to curriculum requirements, to take a GEN course. This involves some voluntary/pro bono work to clear credits, and this is graded.

What some do not know is that some courses might, on top of this, pay you money. In a previous AY, one course that did it was GEN2061: Support Healthy AgeingSG, where students were paid for their work (which involved going door to door to visit the elderly; they were paid based on the number of successful visits, I believe at ~$10 per successful visit). Most courses do not pay.

—
CS/CU
Some students like to take CS/CU courses because these give credits to count towards graduation, while not having any grades attached to them. This may be helpful because you may be able to then focus on your other courses in the semester.

A CS/CU courses that is popular is GES1035/GESS1025 Singapore: Imagining the Next 50 Years (4 units). There are also others that are CS/CU, but with restrictions on eligibility e.g. MKT2711 Marketing Venture Challenge.

There are, of course, CFG courses (if your faculty does not already preallocate you this) that are CS/CU.

***Note that you can only take a maximum of 60 units of 1k courses in your time in NUS, though!

Get your friends/juniors to follow @NUSguide for more tips/reminders, as we continue to walk you through course registration, tutorial registration, and more! 🙌🏻

P.S. if you're bored, you can try out the this.sg/personality student personality quiz that's been circulating around (and was started by nus students) 👀

Reminder that CourseReg ends today at 12 p.m.! Again, there is no submission button after you have ranked your options, and whatever is there simply gets automatically submitted at 12 p.m.

If you bid yesterday, it may make sense to check the current vacancy:demand ratio to see if it has substantially changed by this morning/before the end time. This may help you consider whether to change your ranking of courses depending on how badly you want a particular course, or if the demand is too much higher than vacancy such that it’d be a waste of your time “Rank 1” points to still pick the course.

The ranking of options does matter. Refer to the image for how this works:
Priority Score = A (first table “points”) x B (second table “points”) x C (third table “points” where Rank 1 course gives the most points)

Our academic plan declaration advice would have helped you for A (first table). You’d now want to be strategic with C as that affects each course bid’s total priority score.

Get your friends/juniors to follow @NUSguide for more tips/reminders, as we continue to walk you through course registration, tutorial registration, and more! 🙌🏻

[Ends Today, 30 July 23:59]
Apple Store Online’s Back to School offer is back! 💻

🟢 Maximise your student benefits with ThisCounted’s exclusive link — Get bonus Apple Gift Card/cash on top of Apple’s offer. This year, depending on what product you purchase, you may be able to choose a different accessory for the bundle offer: the Magic Keyboard, Magic Mouse or Magic Trackpad.

📒 Purchases must be through our unique link: bit.ly/ThisCounted

📘 Bonus Apple Gift Card or cash valued at up to $60 (with min. guaranteed value of $30) is provided in addition to Apple's Back to School offer.

📒 Ensure that you’re using ThisCounted’s link ( bit.ly/ThisCounted ) when making your purchase; after student/staff status verification, enter our link again (UNiDAYS may redirect you incorrectly, so just re-enter our link after student/staff status verification, i.e. re-enter the link again when actually checking out)

📘 T&C apply (refer to the image and Apple’s T&C)

🔴 Bonus Apple Gift Card/cash only for those who make verified purchases through ThisCounted’s link from now till 30 July.

Fill this claim form after your purchase (and to indicate preference of Apple Gift Card/cash) : https://forms.gle/CP4pp8inQS3aV9Gp9

Questions? Reach out to us at ThisCountedBiz@gmail.com or @ThisCountedSupportBot
———
FAQ and more student deals: @ThisCounted

Also, final reminder for this which also ends today (but at 23:59)!

If you already got your laptop, an iPad does have an extra perk of acting as a “second monitor” (other than just a larger easy-to-take-around/easy-to-scribble-on device) that some are unaware of! https://support.apple.com/en-sg/102597

This is most seamless if your laptop is already a MacBook; you simply go to the extended display setting, and this can work with your iPad unconnected to the MacBook. For windows laptops, it’s less direct, but there are easy workarounds to still allow for it after connecting a USB cable (specialised but free apps like Spacedesk).

A second display screen might be helpful for productivity: e.g. one device for playing a lecture video/displaying reading material, and the other device for note-taking/writing (or in some courses, programming).

If you’re using the @ThisCounted offer using their unique link, it’s a good idea not to wait till the last hours. The last time they ran a campaign, Apple’s student verification platform crashed and had down-time in their last hours with the last-minute spike in traffic.

Get your friends/juniors to follow @NUSguide for more tips/reminders, as we continue to walk you through course registration, tutorial registration, and more! 🙌🏻

Round 2 course allocation results have started to show up on Edurec earlier today!

To view: Edurec > academics > academic records > view courses

(This is although the official release is tomorrow at 9 a.m.)

Round 3 begins on 4 August, 9 a.m.

Get your friends/juniors to follow @NUSguide for more tips/reminders, as we continue to walk you through course registration, tutorial registration, and more! 🙌🏻

Round 2 demand and allocation report is out! Again, this will be helpful with determining which courses to bid for in Round 3/how you should rank them in Round 3 as you’d know how competitive it would be to bid for the course.

Get your friends/juniors to follow @NUSguide for more tips/reminders, as we continue to walk you through course registration, tutorial registration, and more! 🙌🏻

Round 3 has started and ends 12 p.m. on 5 August.

By default, freshmen can only take a maximum of 23 units in Semester 1. For seniors, you can already go beyond 23 units (“overloading”).

To go even more beyond your stated maximum workload, you can consider writing in to request a maximum workload waiver—this is assessed on a case-by-case basis. It’s probably a good idea to send this in ASAP since there is limited time for them to get back to you before the end of Round 3.
——

Trying Out Courses
If you drop a course before 25 August, it will be as if you never took the course: it won’t appear on your transcript.

If you miss this but nonetheless drop the course by 28 September, you’d get away with a “W” grade that has no effect on your GPA, although this shows up in your transcript.

This technically does give you the option of taking an extra course to try out for the first couple of weeks before deciding whether you’d really want this / before narrowing down to only keep courses that you believe you will do well in.

Get your friends/juniors to follow @NUSguide for more tips/reminders, as we continue to walk you through course registration, tutorial registration, and more! 🙌🏻

Round 3 results have started to show up! As usual, this can be found at Edurec > academics > academic records > view courses

Appeals for courses you didn’t secure can be made starting from 9 a.m. tomorrow and ends on 21 August 6 p.m. (you should likely make the appeal sooner rather than later, though!)

Get your friends/juniors to follow @NUSguide for more tips/reminders, as we continue to walk you through course registration, tutorial registration, and more! 🙌🏻

Tutorial registration is on 12 August and starts at 9 a.m., ending at 5 p.m.
Note that this is a way shorter window for registration than coursereg!

—-
Re-sharing this: Below is a message on the balloting process which isn’t by us, but has been passed down by various NUS seniors! Note that “courses” used to be referred to as “mods”:

“Balloting process

How to ballot like a senior
(by sam chan)

First, here is how the balloting works:
- you rank up to 20 tutorial slots according to your preference, with the slots you want more ranked higher
- you do not have to use all 20, and in fact you can just put one tutorial slot per mod
- the system looks at your first choice, checks the tutorial class, and if there are vacancies, you're in!
- the process then repeats for your second, third choice etc. until you have tutorials for all your mods, or you have no viable options left (i.e. all your preferred tutorials are full)
- it's quite by luck in the sense that if you're the 26th person the system sees for a 25-person class, you don't get it, even if you put it as first choice. hence the term balloting. IT IS NOT FIRST COME FIRST SERVE!

Now that you know how balloting roughly works, here are some pointers!

1. Plan for multiple timetables
- needless to say we all have that one tutorial slot we want (for free day, with friends, both, etc.), however it would be terribly unwise to not have any backup plans/tutorial slots. having three choices per mod is a safe number, although you can go up to 4 per mod (equal distribution among 5 mods) or any number really (unequal distribution)

2. Know your preferences
- even among your first choice tutorial slots for your modules, it's good to know which are the ones you want the most
- generally you get your first three choices, while anything after that is more risky, so you need to priorities which are the ones you diedie must get, and hence rank first

3. Know that certain tutorial slots are more popular
- generally tutorial slots from 10-4 are the more popular ones
- likewise for those on the same day as the lecture for that mod
- you might want to rank these slots higher
- this is more for your knowledge, but if you plan to take this tutorial with say >5 friends, some of you might not get it

Keeping these pointers in mind, you ballot! And here's now:
(note: you don't have to follow this method but I find it really helpful. also, it's based on the assumption that one has 5 mods to ballot for)

1) Note down the tutorial slots you want on a piece of paper (virtual or otherwise) according to your modules, while ranking them at the same time.
- you should have 5 columns of 4 tutorial slots each (assuming equal distribution), already in order of preference

2) Double check the timings and the tutorial number (eg. D3, E5, etc.)

3) Rank all your tutorial slots in a flop-table style (MOST IMPORTANT STEP). This might require some explanation, so bear with me.

Let's say your 5 mods are called 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, and it's according to the mod which first-choice tutorial slot you want the most
Each mod has 4 tutorial slots, called A, B, C, and D according to your preference.

Here's how your ranking would look like then:

1A
2A
3A
4A
5A
5B
4B
3B
2B
1B
1C
2C
3C
4C
5C
5D
4D
3D
2D
1D

Basically you "reflect" your mods. Since you're quite likely to get your choices for 1, 2, and 3, but less so for 4, and 5, your sixth and seventh choices should be the second-choice for mods 4 and 5 to increase your chances of getting what you want.

4) Finally, don't panic if you don't have any tutorial slots! There is always add/drop and online swaps, and worst case manual registration. It's all part of student life! But if you follow the above, it's less likely to happen (: “
—-

If you found these useful, do share our channel @NUSguide with your friends/juniors — we share uni tips/hacks throughout the year! 🙌🏻

AY25/26 Sem 1 GC UPDATES (to add on, message @aaldentnay ; view most updated list @nuschs )

Main CHS group: @nuschs
⭐️CHS 1k HS_ courses + FAS1101 will use “topics” within @nuschs; you may mute those that you are not taking, while unmuting those that you do take.

GEA1000: https://t.me/+8HBmm8iC_uQxN2M1 (reuse)

DTK1234: https://t.me/+YvXHhqZmX4s2ZGY1 (reuse)

⭐️ for social sciences/humanities sem 1 modules

Econs : https://t.me/+yaRCmqLTcQRjODhl (reuse)

PolSci: https://t.me/+LBhjvpwgrP8yMDY1 (reuse)

Psych: https://t.me/+OpStBtGuRbZhYzY9 (reuse)

History: https://t.me/+UlbypYTj9tJiMzY1 (reuse)

Sociology: https://t.me/+S-NNiEJ2uqphODY1 (reuse)

Global studies: https://t.me/+xuLk6CE5RHk1Yjll (new)

⭐️ Math / Stats

MA1100 (Discrete Mathematics): https://t.me/+zjqDtzTRGTsxNTg1

MA2001 (Linear Algebra 1): https://t.me/+D3thWgF34EkwM2Fl

MA2002 (Calculus): https://t.me/+6Fwb10ezI5lkZjFl

MA2101 (Linear Algebra 2): https://t.me/+aXbY64EDfj8xMjM1

MA2104 (Multivariable Calculus): https://t.me/+JpLLSeDwmoU5YzQ1

MA2108 (Mathematical Analysis 1): https://t.me/+duCRbsMAAfRmMjU1

MA2202 (Algebra 1): https://t.me/+CRyCbYez0yUzOWM1

MA3220 (Ordinary Differential Equations): https://t.me/+XtFj3Rfmby4zMzY1

MA2116/ST2131 (Probability): https://t.me/+YPgxN8oF_bgwOWFl

ST2132 (Mathematical Statistics): https://t.me/+EfMTSud6mt9lMzhl

⭐️ CS1010S: https://t.me/+afBfOiiKXDw2MGE1

⭐️Physics
PC1201: https://t.me/+Zh0MMgKKdL0wYmE1

⭐️DSA:
https://t.me/+p90zamuADHQ5NmY1 (reuse)


⭐️ FRESHIE/student tips: @NUSguide

⭐️ Bots for random anon chatting: @nuschatbot / @nusmatchbot (safer version w student verification) | @simplymeetbot / @cupidsgbot

⭐️ Student discounts: @ThisCounted

P.S. don’t mute the announcements channel—only impt info/academic info/compilations will be sent here!

^ some course-based groups forwarded here!

do view our previous compilation here too as well!

🚨Ending in about 2 hours! Tutorial registration ends at 5 p.m. today. Note that you can still edit your choices after pressing “continue”.

Do prepare sufficient backups, as it is not uncommon to not get your preferred choices. Naturally, certain slots e.g. those after a lecture may be more popular. Rank strategically if you know that slots you want are popular (this could either mean ranking them in better positions to stand a chance, or deciding that it’s too competitive and it’s better to jump straight to your next-best option as your best ranked course).

For students in some faculties, you’d see that you have a choice of tutorials in odd weeks or even weeks. In this case, some students would prefer to split these (have some tutorials on even, some on odd) such that you have a more balanced workload across all weeks. (Alternatively, some students prefer to have more “free days” and thus prefer to have as many tutorials happening on the same day as possible)

If you found these useful, do share our channel @NUSguide with your friends/juniors — we share uni tips/hacks throughout the year! 🙌🏻

^P.S. no worries if you didn't secure some slots at all — some courses may not be fully processed yet, so you can only be sure after the official release time (9 a.m. tomorrow)

Round 2 results officially release tomorrow, 18 August at 9 a.m. (but it’s apparently already visible unofficially if you check now!); what is important is that the add/swap tutorial option also opens at 9 a.m. The add/swap is first come first serve (this is unlike all the previous rounds!) Thus, you’d want to be awake at 9 a.m. to have your first pick at any remaining vacancies (if you need them). Requests to add/swap are processed at regular intervals: you’ll be shown the number of “matching requests” when you try to swap.

Typically, swapping with friends would mean to coordinate to submit, at the same time, aligned swap requests and hope the system swaps both of you successfully. The course/faculty groups we shared earlier on our channel are helpful for this and you can start searching ahead of time for one-one swaps since the swap period is short, ending at 5 p.m.

If you found these useful, do share our channel @NUSguide with your friends/juniors — we share uni tips/hacks throughout the year! 🙌🏻

What happens if I still do not secure a tutorial swap after the Add/Swap period (ends 5 p.m. today)?

After 5 p.m., you may begin appealing to your course's host department. Limited reasons are accepted for appeals. You may attempt this if you have any extenuating circumstances.

It’s been said that if your NUS course timetable has a clash from other courses such that you have no choice but to take another tutorial at a particular timing, and you didn’t manage to secure that, an email appeal to the faculty/course department may stand a chance at succeeding.

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You may be wondering how some unscrupulous seniors have managed to secure their spots, which we will share for purely informational purposes:

On an extreme, some seniors have gone to the extent of intentionally causing a schedule clash in an attempt to get the tutorial slot they want (of course, it is probably too late for you to do that now even if you wanted to).

On an even greater extreme, some realise that when appeals to course host departments are made, host departments may not know your actual timetable especially if it consists of other faculties' courses in the mix. They thus send an image of a false nusmods.com timetable that shows a “clash” between the undesired tutorial slot and another course. This probably only works in the following sequence:

E.g. the course has two tutorial slots, tut 1 and tut 2 (and the student doesn’t want tut 2)

Round 1: he bids only for tut 1 (fail)
Round 2: he bids only for tut 1 (fail)
Add/Swap: skip/ don’t bother adding tut 2
Appeal to course’s host department, claiming he didn’t bid for tut 2 due to a “clash” with another course (from a different department/faculty).

This is because if he didn’t want tut 2, but was allocated it in Round 1 or 2, then to claim a clash would be more clearly disingenuous: edurec would not have allowed him to pick tut 2 if there were a clash. The above sequence of events may stand a chance of success because he was never allocated tut 2, and is able to claim he didn’t select it due to a clash, with the course host department possibly unable to verify on its own if there is truly a clash. (However, such a request may still be rejected / you may instead be given the option to drop the course if they really are unable to add more vacancies).
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Of course, we don't promote unethical loopholes here, so this is shared purely for informational purposes. Although understandable in some unfortunate circumstances, turning to the aforementioned approach remains wrong and discouraged (students may also potentially face disciplinary action if caught, so do be mindful of that).

If you found these useful, do share our channel @NUSguide with your friends/juniors — we share uni tips/hacks throughout the year! 🙌🏻