FASS vs Yale-NUS -is liberal arts always better? thoughts of an ex-Rafflesian

I've always been a sucker for all things unorthodox. However, when facing my own life decisions, a series of events meant that I had to examine the 'orthodox pile', but I am glad I did. 

As a student in Raffles institution, my outlook on life after JC was always very simple -at least before I started receiving the piles of rejection letters: go to Oxford, Cambridge or Harvard. But of course, life was never that smooth-sailing, I did not get into any. 

Oh well, after burning some rejection letters, I started googling pictures of London and Edinburgh... wow, seriously, Edinburgh is simply beautiful. So yes, there I have built an image of my happy place: the University of Edinburgh. 

Remember how they say that with good A-level grades you can go anywhere... well, they forgot about the finances. So off I go failing every single one of the scholarship interviews. On hindsight, I am actually quite glad because firstly the corporate companies offering scholarships were really everything I hated about the corporate world -they gave us a  40 minute presentation on why they were the best airlines in the world, and did not even bother trying to hide the fact that staff-wellness and social causes were REALLY not their concern- and the government sector -even the interviewers had a look of resignation that says something about the horrendous bureaucracy in our government. After perusing countless websites which cited the testimonies of those who have quit government jobs before finishing their bonds, I realized that 6 years of serving an organization which I have not much affinity for would really be a great opportunity cost. 

And so, now that going overseas is out of the picture... enter the dreaded world of local studies. Wow, you have no idea how those two words used to evoke feelings of great dread. Having suffered for years in the "world-class" pressure cooker -also known as the Singapore education system- I was now throwing myself back into its cold embrace. 

So instead of jumping right into what I perceived as hot waters, I decided to go for a compromise. Enter Yale-NUS. Knowing nothing much about it except for the fact that it has a greater number of international students and a liberal arts system, I decided to apply for it. 

Well, this time, I wasn't rejected -but hold your hoorahs- I was waitlisted. I guess that ain't too bad. 

However, now that I was also accepted into the Faculty of Arts and Social sciences in NUS, I had a decision to make. 

My gut feeling at that time was definitely something like: OMG PLS NOT NUS NOO.... and that phrase was also repeated in all the texts I sent to my friends. 

But as with all things, time tends to remind us of what's rational. 

The big question is: Is liberal arts necessarily superior to a traditional major-minor course? 

Well, it is easy to be carried away by the rhetoric that liberal arts will make you a more creative thinker, a more culturally-diverse person (like how?) and make you ultimately a more cultivated person. 

As always, it is important to be critical about such things. Indeed, liberal arts allows you to take a diverse range of modules, in fact up to around 19 in the first year, however, does it mean that more is necessarily better? FASS in NUS also allows you to take different modules and electives in the first year, but of course not as many as 19. The thing here to ask oneself is: theoretically it would be great if I can understand and learn say 19 different disciplines but would it be so great when those are examinable and what if some of those include things that I personally would never want to touch on again -say physics or mathematics. 

The key thing to note is that going to FASS does not limit your learning in areas other than your selected major unless you yourself choose to do so. You CAN choose electives from life science, business and so on; but the point is, would you? If you are like me, disinterested in say life sciences, then chances are you won't. But yet in Yale-Nus, the opportunity to learn life sciences alongside arts suddenly -and perhaps inexplicably- becomes an advantage. That to me is just bullcrap! What made me certain that liberal arts just might not work for me is the fact that when I tried course-hopping on Coursera, it is clear that most courses other than psychology or sociology just don't interest me that much. Thus, for me to go to Yale-Nus and take up those courses would simply detract from researching deeper into subjects that do interest me. 

The second problem lies in the assumption that skills from different disciplines definitely improve your learning in your selected major. Yes, perhaps sometimes you can practice more divergent thinking when you have a wide knowledge base, however, for this to happen, one must actually be good enough to acquire the useful "essences" of those diverse disciplines. If for instance, you're like me, who can't stand even basic algebra, the access to the "essence" of mathematical skillsets would likely be out of reach for me even after a year of liberal arts. Furthermore, when it comes to sciences, university level sciences are I believe unnecessary to inculcate certain transferable skills like critical thinking and problem analysis if one has already been practicing those thought patterns during JC studies. In fact, going further in physics or chemistry, may not really bring about many useful transferable skills or cognitive methods, in my opinion.

The third problem is that we often over-estimate our potential passion for new things. For a while, I was keen on the idea of taking literature -though for the past 6 years, I have chosen to live without it- at the university level because it just sounded super cool -as would all the course descriptors of modules sound like until you REALLY get into things. Well, I am glad I did my own test runs. While I did enjoy reading Catcher in the Rye, Lady Chatterley's lover and some other equally fun and scandalous novels, I found that reading the sparksnotes on these books just destroyed my liking of those books. CURSE YOU SPARKNOTES >.< it's as though it took the magic out of the novels and left me looking at the stories as nothing but an overlap of themes and ideas. Some might find critical literary analysis intriguing, but for me, it's literally depressing. Similarly, I have tried to dabble in some of the other courses offered by liberal arts like history, but I realized that the "over-estimation" syndrome kicks in once more: on the surface, reading say the history of napolean seems super cool and frankly it is really cool but once we get down to analyzing event after event, factor after factor, well, the magic is lost. Also, for a person who gets disillusioned quite quickly, I have come to the conclusion that historical and literary analysis are probably not the most useful things in the world; and so is philosophy and trying to find out if ethics exist in nature. I suppose it's good that I recognized my own cynicism before jumping into liberal arts. 

The fourth problem: does a multi-cultural environment necessarily bring about more diverse opinions? Well, yes definitely. However, it is also naive to believe that just because a class of people are mainly local Singaporeans diversity would not exist. In fact, more often than not, you can and will find very diverse opinions if only one would bother to ask. Furthermore, if one seeks the opinions of a culture starkly different, there are many opportunities for overseas exchange in FASS, which is on par with, if not superior to, the experience of seeing a lot of foreigners in Yale-NUS daily. 

The reason is simple: from my experiences of going on two French-exchange programs, it is often the immersion in the culture there, from speaking to host families, to observing what people actually do in France and coming to your own conclusions about their cultures that really open you up to new perspectives as opposed to just talking to a person of a different nationality. After all, foreign students are here to study and have fun like you and probably won't be sticking around all the time just to let you probe into their culture. 

The fifth problem: The stresses of being in a tiny, insular environment. Needless to say, the small cohort of 170 is a BIG issue for me -no irony intended. Knowing myself, I am hardly the type who gets on well with the "mainstream"; as in JC, my friends tended to be people who are the un-hip ones or the ones who are unknown in school. In an insular environment however, everything will always be subject to scrutiny: everyone knows everyone and little setbacks in socializing can become major hurdles through the echo-chamber effect. Well, the list can go on forever. 

Another reason I would prefer FASS is because of the greater opportunity to interact with people of different backgrounds; yale-nus is needless to say super super selective, which also means that people in Polytechnics and those who scored less than 5 As are probably rare species. Furthermore, judging by the type of interviews and essays used to admit Yale-Nus students, it would be fair to conclude that the type of students admitted are probably the more outspoken bunch or are in some way similar. In fact, testimonies from my own seniors in Yale-Nus do concur: they observe that many yale-nus students are of the "ra-ra" type, that is to say flamboyant and bubbly. This again raises the problem of the possibility of being an outcast if one did not fit into the dominant culture when in such an insular environment. 

I believe that as with all things in life, there will be the good and the bad that will come with studying with FASS. However, in my opinion, liberal arts, while potentially beneficial, might not be really my cup of tea after all. 

But that does that condemn me to a life of speaking and hearing only psychology? Hell no! If one chooses electives wisely or even just picks up a book or two -without having to subject oneself to the stresses of trying to be a pundit in everything, ahem, literary analysis- then who is to say that you are not as well-rounded as the next person in a liberal arts education?