I would like to congratulate you for getting the opportunity to go abroad and examine a new country. I was admitted to Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. This will be the most exciting semester of the whole Bachelor program och you will learn a lot of new things that you didm´t know about yourself. 

After being admitted to a school there are a lot of administrative parts to take care of, which can be a bit of a headache in the beginning but with a good plan everything will be solved in the end and you will be sitting on the flight in the beginning of January full of expectations. I was accepted to Nanyang Technological University and as soon as it was decided they sent me an e-mail describing everything that had to be conducted and important dates that I had to remember. This made it easy to proceed the process but it is important to not be afraid of asking either the university or the coordinator here in Sweden if there is something you are unsure about so that everything is done in the correct way. With help from the exchange coordinator I had frequent contact with the university throughout the whole process making it very easy going. What is the most important is to start the process of finding a supervisor, which can take some time. A good start is to decide what you are interested in working with but unfortunately it is important to be open for all choices because many institutions may not have time or money to receive you. A good link to research groups associated to biomedicine is to the school of biomedical science, http://www.sbs.ntu.edu.sg/AboutSBS/Faculty/Pages/FacultyDir.aspx, but if you are interested in other areas there are other schools of the university for instance I did my work at the cultural science institute. You can read more of the schools on this site, http://research.ntu.edu.sg/researchatntu/Pages/Researchwithincolleges.aspx. You will read through and then find what you think sounds interesting and then e-mail the professor and describe that you are an undergraduate student and that you are interesting in their work. The professors interesting in receiving you will probably ask you to send in a resume and a description of you knowledge in the area. When you have been accepted in a lab there is time to apply to the university. There is a chance that you will have to apply before finding a supervisor but that will be no problem as long as you have contact with the university, you will only have to send in that information afterwards. It is important to follow the instruction to the application carefully, save the papers and have copies. These papers will be of importance when entering the country and register at the university. 

There is also essential to get vaccinated, Hepatitis A and B are the once required for Singapore and you will get a discount from the school as well. Remember to start the vaccination in time approximately half a year before travelling. Another important part to think of before leaving is to think of insurance. The school offers an insurance covering the time in school and in the country you are studying in but if you want to travel during your stay you will have to subscribe your own insurance. It is also good to have a home insurance if you are planning to not live on campus. About living, you are lucky if you manage to get a apartment on campus because it is almost impossible. We were four people going to Singapore from our program and we wanted to live together so about two months before leaving we started to look at different choices of living to the budget that we had. We realized that we wanted to live in a condominium were a pool and gym were included. It was hard to get a feeling of what the apartments looked like so we contacted some brokers and told them what we wanted and when we were arriving. Some good sites are http://www.propertyguru.com.sg and http://www.singaporeexpats.com. When you look at these sites you will se a lot of apartments that will have different brokers. What we finally did was to contact a lot of brokers from where one kept in touch and offered to meet with us when we had arrived in Singapore. We met her during the first week and went on viewings. When we found a good apartment we were able to move in one week later. But the disadvantage with hiring a broker is that you will have to pay half of a monthly rent in advance to the broker. But on the other hand she or he will be there for you, if something happens to the apartment they will stand up for you against the landlord which is good due to the rules of living being different in Singapore compared to Sweden. It is good to make reservations at a hotel or hostel for maybe one week when arriving because it will be a lot to deal with during the arrival and you will not be able to find a living during the first day if it is not already fixed. We booked our flight approximately one month before leaving and a ticket is around 6 000 SEK. 

The travel to Singapore is very long and exhausting and it is a good idea to grab a cab when arriving. Taxi in Singapore is very cheap and easy to use but it is a good idea to have a postal code to the place you want to go to. You will probably not have the possibility to take a taxi all the time therefore it is important to get a MRT-card as soon as possible. To do so you will have to go to a MRT station. You will fill the card with money and every distance cost different amounts of money. The card can be refilled in machines located at almost all MRT stations. One important thing to remember is that you will have to blip your card both when entering and exiting the subway and the busses. One recommendation is to download all Singaporean apps considering taxi booking and municipal traffic for easy booking and localization. We arrived two weeks before we started in the lab but one week before we had to go the university for registration. To arrive so long time in advance was to recommend since it took us more than one week to get an apartment.

The registration is very important. There will be one day where you will get your university card, e-mail and fix all papers and then there is a second day when people from the immigration center (ICA) will come and you will create you student pass then a third day you will go and collect your student pass. The first day you will go to the main building of the campus close to Starbucks and McDonald’s here you will first take a number tag and wait for your turn. You will then have to pay approximately 600 SEK in school fees. You will then receive your university card and choose password for the in log and your e-mail. After that you will continue to a room with different booth here the students will help you and control so that you will have all your papers that you will need. That day is then over. You will here get a lot of information about the school and campus and also the time, place and date for the making of student pass. About one week after you will meet with ICA (immigration and checkpoints authority of Singapore). I will recommend you to be on time (even early) because that will make the process go easier. You will have to bring ALL papers that you have received because if you are missing only one paper you will not be able to create your student pass. Around one week after that you will have to go to the same place to collect the student pass. How you get to the school of course depends on where you live but the closes MRT station is Pioneer on the green line from here you can take bus 179 to the school otherwise there is one more buss, 199, that goes from the MRT station Boon Lay. There is also an campus buss that takes you around the whole university.

First you will have to pay the different costs to the school when applying and they will require you to pay the school fees when arriving but this information will clearly be sent to you in advance. You will also have to pay all the costs for vaccination, which summed up reached to around 4 000 SEK if you choose to take all vaccines that the vaccination center recommend.

The most expensive part of your budget in Singapore is the accommodation. We were four people living in an apartment with three bedrooms, one living room, kitchen and two bathrooms paying 5 000 SEK per person but on the other hand did we have access to a large pool, gym and tennis courts. We also manage to get electricity and water included in the contract witch is a good thing to note due to it being very expensive in Singapore. Remember to bring a lot of ready money or withdraw money when you arrive because you will probably have to pay the broker half a moth rent and then a deposition to the landlord and they also started the monthly rent from the date when we moved in. So in one week we had to pay approximately 15 000 SEK per person. It is important to withdraw money as soon as possible as you arrive because you will only be able to take out 900 SGD per day and the exchange currency is around 5,5. We had big troubles getting internet to the apartment because that was not include in the rent and all the largest internet operators required at least a one year contract. But finally we found this small company, ViewQwest, which could provided a good internet service for a couple of months. The cons with this company was that we had to pay 3 200 SEK in deposition and then 320 SEK per month.

It is a good idea to create an ICA-banken bank account because then you will have free out takes and the card does not cost anything for students. In this country it is to have cash for taxi, food and many other things. Singapore is not as developed in card usage if it is not in a restaurant or in a shop.

The food in Singapore is far more cheap than in Sweden a lunch at school costs around 3-5 SGD corresponding 15-25 SEK and we lived very close to a food court as well making us buy food there almost every day. It is not even that expensive to go to restaurants, meaning that we ate out every weekend and that was still not more expensive that cooking at home. The cost for the municipal traffic was around 250 SEK depending on how much and far you travel. The cost of taking a taxi will not be more that 300 SEK and that is when you travel from one side of the country to the other. There are a lot of things to do in Singapore, many of them are for tourists and these are quite expensive but on the other hand the shopping can be very cheap. To go out in Singapore you will not find much different from Sweden, the prices are almost the same. But the nightclubs and bars are much cooler.  

 See under "before departure" and "economy". 

I did not take any courses in Singapore and unfortunately I cannot say anything about the “study environment”.  I was placed in a relatively small lab with two professors and around ten graduate students (PHD students). The group was a mix of people coming from different parts of the world and they all worked together and helped each other in different projects. I had a supervisor who was a first year PHD student and we worked close together in order to make progress in my project. People wanted to help and to explain which helped me a lot. The professor was not in the lab so much of the time but when he arrived he tried to take time to go through things with me. We also had a weekly lab meeting where different professors or researchers came and had a presentation and then we had discussions in the group, these were very educating. 

The official language in Singapore is English, which made it easy to live on a daily basis. The only thing is that they had a very different accents, which made it difficult in the beginning but as time passed you got the hang of it and followed easily. The culture in general is very different compared to Sweden. People are very polite and withdrawn and most of the people are very hierarchical. This was fairly proved in the school environment where the professors are highly respected and people are taken for their educational status. For me this was something that needed to be respected and followed. Small things as clothing and how to talk to people in the lab are parts that should be considered. You should not come in small shorts and a tank top for instance. Otherwise Singapore is a highly developed country with all types of cultures in a great mix so outside of school it was nothing that you would had to think much of except being polite when talking to people. One great thing as a tourist in Singapore is that the country has very high security you will never feel afraid during the period of your abroad studies.     

Unfortunately there was hard to find a lot of new friends when not taking classes but the university arranged some days on campus where you could get familiar with different activities that the university provided such as sports and groups. I was not very much of interest in these activities so I don´t know much about them but the opportunity definitely was there. The country itself had a lot to offer. You could visit different areas specialized in different cultures like Chinatown and little India. There is also an artificially made island that gives the opportunity to enjoy the sun and go swimming and off course you will not miss the Marina bay sands hotel with the coolest nightclub on the fifty seventh floor. Other party places are Clark Quay where you have several bars and clubs and also the world´s highest rooftop club, 1 Altitude. Due to the fact that Singapore is a multicultural country influenced of the whole world there is a lot of different food you can try and enjoy even though everything may not be something that you like. Singapore is located in the middle of South East Asia enabling cheap travelling during the weekends one cheap airline is “Tiger air” that can take you to all different places in Asia.  

To go abroad on an exchange semester is the best thing you would ever experience. You will be challenged and learn new things about yourself and also of a totally unknown country. The choice of going to Singapore is something that you will never regret and this will really be the best time of your bachelor program. I hope you will have an unforgettable visit and I promise you will miss all of it when you return home.