A Guide for New Graduate Students in NUS

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This entry is an excuse for lack of a good collaborative site. I will update this entry as needed.

How to Select Courses
I consulted with my supervisor about the courses. I am in ECE and my department allowed me to take any number of courses from other faculties. I took several courses (see my courses here) from SoC (School of Computing) as they were more relevant to me. Modules from ECE, Maths, Comp, ISE and Stat. Other courses can be found from the list of all faculties.

Typically you get a week at the start of the semester to decide on your courses. In the first week you can visit the course, talk with the lecturer and by the end of week can decide on the course. During the first week, there is also a second-hand book buying/selling program (library has a huge collection of books, but usually there is only 1-2 copies of a book). You can also use the "Used Textbook Forum" in Ivle Student Workspace, but this forum is dominated by undergrads (as many other things in NUS).

Seminars and Talks
I was interested in AI Planning-related SoC talks. I found out that there is a mailing list of COMP seminars. I subscribed to it at seminar-l at comp.nus.edu.sg (you can subscribe by sending a mail to 'seminar-l-request@comp.nus.edu.sg' with subject 'subscribe'). I can submit my attendance to these seminars as well as part of my module requirement on seminars in my department. Similarly I subscribed to mailing lists of other faculties (sent them an email) I was interested in.

Conferences and Workshops
After, say 6 months-1 year, your advisor may ask you to prepare for a workshop/conference. Searching for good conferences/workshops in your area may be tricky at the start. There are some conference lists like allconferences.com, but usually you have to look at more than one sites to find good conferences of your choice. Some profs maintain conf list on their websites, which is quite useful. Also beware of some conferences of poor quality: they have a wide subject cover (little focus) and will publish all papers they receive.

Searching
Search plays an important role in research. Apart from Google, I use Google Scholar. As a NUS student, I can access IEEE, Springer etc via the library gateway. To keep up to date with the current research, it is useful to subscribe to mailing lists in your area - ask your supervisor if there are any. As for me, I am subscribed to:

http://groups.google.com/group/search-list?hl=en
http://www.euro-online.org/eume/
http://www.jair.org/

among others.

Housing/Accommodation
A guide for graduate students in Singapore would be incomplete without the topic of housing. Housing is tricky in Singapore, so read on.

Most houses available for rent in Singapore have 3-4 rooms. Therefore, usually singles (and even married couples) share a house. The common terminology is "Master room" means a room with attached toilet and bathroom and a "Common Room" has a shared toilet and bathroom. Cost for a master room would be 700-1200 SGD per month, common room would be lesser. Separate houses (1+1 -- the trend/law is that the house owner locks one or more rooms of the house, for example lock one room of 2+1 will leave 1+1 available to rent) are 0.9K-1.5K or even more, depending on location.

A map of NUS is quite useful at the start (see for example the campusmap). The close-by areas to NUS are Clementi, Dover, Commonwealth, Jurong East, Jurong West (also called Boon Lay) and Pandan Gardens. There are usually direct buses from these places to some parts of NUS (there are many routes on the various sides of NUS -- Pasir Panjang Road, Clementi Road, AYE -- see this link). You will need Ezlink card to travel on these buses (you can get Ezlink card on any MRT station -- Ezlink card is also used within MRT). Within NUS you can travel using the Internal Shuttle Buses (ISB) named A1, A2, B, C, D -- these are free buses.

Finding accommodation can be a little tricky with agents involved. The agents ask for a commission of 1 month rent for up to 1 yr contract and 2 month rent for a 2 yr contract. Be careful that you trust the house owner (check with other tenants for example), otherwise there are cases where owners are not very friendly.

A good site to find accommodation is sg-house.com. There is also an internal NUS site for accommodation for NUS students. This internal site has houses close to NUS. Further, there are usually some pamphlets about rent at bus stops near Central Library and opposite to it.

Would welcome your comments.