What do Americans think about National University of Singapore (NUS)?

30 comments

1. I have no thoughts about it

   I didn’t even know it existed before this question

2. Not on my radar at all.

3. Most Americans know 2 universities outside of USA.

   Oxford and Cambridge.

4. This is the first time I’ve ever heard of it

5. I doubt very many Americans have heard of it at all. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a great school, just that we’re a very long way from Singapore.

6. I didn’t know about it until 7:23am Los Angeles time, December 14, 2022.

7. Singapore isn’t a popular place for Americans to attend school and Singapore doesn’t send a lot of immigrants to the US, so it’s not someplace that’d have a chance to develop a reputation outside of academia.

   If Singapore makes an internationally popular movie set there, I bet it’d shoot way up the “known universities” list.

8. I’ve never heard of it. I don’t know any international universities outside of England.

9. Probably 99% of Americans don’t think about it at all, myself included.

10. If they had a good football team I would have heard of them

11. Wut?

    Today, I learned…

    Before this, I knew of Cambridge, Oxford, U of Regina, UTokyo, and Kim Il Sung U (which I only know about because I saw someone explain N. Korean TV on Youtube)

12. Sorry OP, this is news to me.

    Don’t be to surprised though, we have a significant number of colleges and universities. I Kansas, a state of less than three million, there are almost 30 two and four year colleges to choose from, and almost 4,400 nation wide.

13. Better than State University of Singapore. That place is SUS.

14. They have any QBs in the transfer portal?

15. We don’t

    Americans don’t really know much about schools outside the US. I grew up in an area where people are very well educated, put emphasis on trying to get into elite universities. My extended family were the same… I know lots of people who’ve gone to Ivy League schools, top schools like Duke, Northwestern, Stanford, etc. So spend lots of time in circles where people talk a lot about schools, both choosing where to attend and also where people went.

    The only foreign schools I know about are Oxford, Cambridge London School of Economics in England, Sorbonne in Paris, McGill in Montreal.

16. Maybe a small fraction of Singaporean Americans think about it in any measurable sense. So out of the 39,000 here I would be surprised if more than half had any thoughts on it whatsoever. That would be less 0.001% of the population of 330 million.

17. The US has a wide variety of top universities so most people don’t even consider studying abroad. Not to mention most American only speak English and some Spanish. Plus it’s just a university isn’t it? Is there something we should know about that could incite a strong opinion on this school?

18. I have probably looked at thousands of CVS in my life. Global company. I can’t recall a single one from NUS.

    It sounds impressive, but I have not encountered it.

19. I don’t want to be annoyingly US centric but I think because the US has such a strong academic field, other countries know more about our universities than we do theirs.

20. Never heard of it and one of my college roommates was from Singapore.

21. I work for a university. The out of country universities that I’m aware of are usually ones that collaborators or big names in my field work at. McGill, Max Plank, Oxford, Cambridge, Pasteur.

    What is the university known for? I’m betting people in that field would know of them.

22. This is the first I’ve heard of it. And I’d bet money that if I asked everyone I know (including many Asian-Americans), almost none of them will have heard of it either.

    That is not an indicator of the school’s merit. Americans rarely attend foreign universities, and the ones that do almost always go to Europe, especially the UK. Barely any Americans even look into which universities exist in East Asia, much less which ones are highly-rated.

23. How is their football program?

24. Never heard of it. The only thing I know about Singapore is that gum is banned and caning exists as a punishment.

25. As an American who lived in Singapore and attended some schooling in Singapore (not at NUS). I can say to those who know, its held in really high regard.

    Again for most who know, There is however, a stigma about the type of Native Singaporean who graduates from NUS. Because to get there you have to have done really well on all your exams, likely held a more prestigious NS job (ie not firefighter or cop) and really played the system well. Problem is a lot of people who did go that path, often are seen as being terrible at being independent workers.

    To do well you in your O level you have to memorize an insane amount of information. Critical thinking isn’t as necessary. Much of the schooling leading up to that is a lot of memorization to get to that point. Heck even primary school is preparing for PSLE which is in a similar vein.

    This leads to some of the more, on paper, successful students entering the real world expecting to be micro managed in a similar way. So in the professional world this can get really frustrating and draw attention to their schooling specifically in ways other institutions might not. Because they clearly know their stuff, but just can’t apply it.

    Oddly enough Polytech students tended to be better workers despite getting a “worse education” because they were given a smidgen more freedom on how to learn. So tended to be more creative.

    So tldr, NUS grads will be brilliant but no very independent

26. About the same we think about the University of Bucharest: nothing at all.

27. Given what I know about Singapore I’d guess that most of its students are Asian.

28. With 7 of the top 10 being American universities, 11th for NUS really just doesn’t cut it for making it into relevant brain space for the vast majority of Americans

29. No one in the US pays much attention to either the QS or the Times rankings which are really targeted at people looking to pursue a Ph.D overseas (hence the heavy emphasis on research output), and Singapore isn’t really considered at all as a destination to study by most Americans who are.

    The US News and World Report rankings are the ones most Americans are concerned about: https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges

30. I have an extremely low opinion of Singapore and any institution within it. The country is an authoritarian nightmare with a nice coat of paint.