2014/15 Sem 1 Academic Module Review

Below is my module review for AY2014/15 Sem 1:

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CS2105 Computer Networks

The concepts are intuitive, just that quite a lot of details need to be memorized for the tests.

The programming assignments take time to implement and more time to debug but not very hard if you have some background in Java.

For final, my revision focused too much on computations and procedures and did not memorize all small details so the MCQs are hard for me.

Expected Grade: B+

Actual Grade: B+

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CS2106 Introduction to Operating Systems

The concepts are intuitive, not a lot of details like CS2105 but a lot of procedures.

The programming assignments are the same difficulty level as CS2105, takes some time to implement and debug, but not hard in nature, you can pick your own favourite language.

The final this time is 19 questions, each testing on one procedure, with the exception of 1 question which is on the concept. Overall I think the final was manageable if you understand the concepts well enough.

Expected Grade: A-

Actual Grade: A-

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ST2334 Probability and Statistics

The concepts are similar to what was taught in JC H2 Maths, just deeper. For topics on probability and hypothesis testing, there are some derivations and table lookups which are not taught before but other than those, there are not much new things.

For final, majority of questions are about computation, about 15% of questions are about concepts, which I could not recall because I did not revise them. Other than that, the questions are okay.

Expected Grade: A-

Actual Grade: B+ Mostly due to poor performance in the finals and of course bell curve god!

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LSM1302 Genes and Society

As a student with O level biology background, I took this module as one of my core science module, not GEM/GEK. However I did not really study until the reading week because… Actually I have no idea why I was not studying this module, the lectures are actually quite interesting (which I found out later). After going through all the webcasts in one week, I was quite familiar with most of the concepts. The final tested on both concepts and examples. I did not study examples in depth so I lost some marks there but I did score above average.

The projects are not closely related the the concepts so basically the marks you get depends on how much effort you put in to them.

Expected Grade: B+

Actual Grade: B+

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LAJ1201 Japanese 1

This should be the hardest module that I have taken in NUS so far in 1 and half years. It has three tutorials per week, a lot of homework and a lot of preparations needed to be done before the tutorials. I spent about an average of 2 hours on homework and preparation everyday. And even though I considered that as a lot of effort, I still did not do well for the continuous assessments like the quizzes. So I guess the expected workload from the students should be higher than 10 hours per week (excluding lecture and tutorials).

There are people in this module who obviously have prior experience in Japanese, so as someone who started from the scratch, the bell curve may not favour me.

Expected Grade: B

Actual Grade: B