BCG - Year 3 Semester 1

Howdy I’m actually not dead, my friends! Hope everyone is doing fine 😊

I clearly have not updated this for… 7 months ish? That is exactly how detached I am from life. By the time this comes out, it better be before my holiday trip (no guarantees). If that actually happens, it means that I have not gotten my grades back and I will basically be harping how screwed I am.

I’m starting to look into technical electives (planning to take cyber security spec and/or data science) so that’ll make an interesting post I guess. Also took a popular GERPE so you might wanna stick around~

With my rusty and untrained writing skills, here goes.

(Memeful start with a video of Dreamcatcher’s SuA. Actually me after every paper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AAtQklb6zUw)

* I can’t copy the thumbnail picture but an arbitrary cute SuA picture works too. Now just imagine her loud Leo side coming out. That’s the video above. *

"AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" - Kim Bora, 2k19

AB1501 – Marketing (Business Core)

Course Coordinator: Dr Lim Boon Chong

Tutor: Mr Arthur Soh

Assessment Criteria:

Group Project - Proposal (PowerPoint Presentation) - Marketing Plan (PowerPoint presentation)	- 5% (group) - 20% (group), 10% (individual)
Class Participation	10%
Experiment	8%
Reflection Paper	7%
Finals (open book)	40%

I’m actually starting off with the module that I give the 2^nd least effort to (BT2403 is even more effortless). Business kids, this is a how NOT to. Just a reminder that I am not fighting for a specialisation at all. And yes once again NBS shafting BCG to take NBS Year 1 mods after Year 1 that’s why I’m here. (But I like to fool them thinking that I’m Y3 who dabao-ed this mod. I hope I don’t actually have to do that.)

Content-wise, I am not a huge fan of marketing for starters. Just not things that I would passionately study for. But I appreciate Dr Lim’s (recorded) lecture. I still don’t learn much but he definitely can be trusted.

There’s a fabled tutor that all your seniors would’ve told you to avoid at all cost. And I did. So I add drop to a class with another tutor. It’s no god Dr Lim, but it’s not the madame (I won’t name her I cannot directly criticise a prof that I have never interacted) either. That being said, your prof, good or bad, is your god for 52% so their words over mine all day.

I can however just go ahead telling you more about Mr Soh. Realistically he won’t be more helpful than Dr Lim. But his style is very straightforward.

1. Apply your concepts from your textbook/lecture notes: don’t use terms and concepts outside what is taught (some profs may be ok with alternative models but not him for sure). I remember one group using this less known term (not that wrong like marketing is subjective) but he was not happy and openly feedback that the term is not good OOF.

2. How to score well? Look at the rubric: His feedback is really in the form of sacred rubric.

Other than that, he’s a nice guy, bringing food for morning classes and you can just text him if you got any questions. (And honestly you don’t learn anything from marketing so good profs wouldn’t matter anyway just go ahead and get the nice ones.) Oh and our tutorial is one of the better ones (compared to what I’ve heard from the madame’s students at least). Granted class part still makes the class competitive, but there is no obligation to answer. And definitely don’t need to whip up presentation slides to present for your tutorial I’m sorry lads.

Group project was not perfect but actually not bad. My teammates for the most part are actually hardworking (and admit that NBS is pfft I like these kids) and will hustle. Maybe we aren’t the best speakers but I think our content is quite sold (Y). And I only told them that I’m Y3 (the rest don’t know I don’t bother). So good luck kiddos, if y’all need advice on BA y’all got free pass to hmu.

Experiment is the good ol’ SONA system. For BCG kids y’all should’ve taken OB by then so you know what’s that. But for the rest, TL;DR it’s getting free 8% from doing 4 * 30 mins questionnaires or whatever. Unlike OB, all the dates are opened at once so there’s no FCFS bull-.

As far as finals are concerned, you just need STDP (segmentation, targeting, differentiation, positioning) and 4Ps. That won’t change. HOWEVER, yes indeed there is a slight change to my year. So the case study is reduced from 6 pages to 4 pages (yay right? no.). Dr Lim asked all the students to do preliminary research beforehand… he literally just said “F&B in Singapore” like no way we would use that and think “yea he’ll do vegan fishes” (vegan fishes… is literally my exam question I am not making this up). In retrospect I would advise students to at least look up on macro factors (to start off with segmentation, TDP will ease along), and also look at place and promotion. Things like product and price you won’t know beforehand, but those highlighted in blue you can do something. Also we got 2 questions instead of 4 (sh*t my pants), but he’s testing ALL the main concepts (last time maybe not all 4Ps). So naturally Dr Lim don’t expect full details (and legit no time to finish), but he never elaborated what’s ok to cut out. I mean you can’t ask us to omit one step in IMC for Promotion sir. Nevertheless, you need to write fast! (I can’t preach y’all to practice when I never did so yikes). And just know that questions and concepts won’t stray and betray you, you just need to apply them more sensibly than your peers.

BT2403 – Service Operations Management (Business TE)

Tutor: Asst Prof Wang Jianfu (Course coordinator, also not the Taiwan actor)

Assessment Criteria:

Group Assignments (x2)	20%
Project (6-page report, presentation)	20%
Quiz (x2)	50%
Class Participation	10%

CHILLEST. MOD. EVER! I’m actually questioning that it’s so chill that everyone can actually get A (or bell curve can be finnicky down to 1 raw mark). 100% recommended to make your life easier! Prof Wang is very chill. Also I won’t lie, a lot of exchange students taking this. The exchange students have all the rights to enjoy their time in Singapore but you get what I’m inferring (: Anyway it’s just 2 classes (which I just realised, right as I’m typing, that it’s not that small for a BA cohort. Some BA TE have only one class. This may be a popular choice for BA students I guess and I can see why). So you learn things like queue theory, service inventory management. Basically service industry with some math. I won’t say I listen so attentively in this amazing class but it’s useful stuff. Telling me that I need to locate 3 stalls at locations A, C and E since they mathematically have the “minimum longest distance” to me would be more useful than trying to smoke me by saying “it is to provide the best efficiency with the lowest cost si señor” I hope that gives you an idea on what this is about. Right I forgot to mention that Excel Solver is used for first half. Cool stuff~

Attendance is… well prof knows not to treat us like kids and force us to whip our valid reason if we can’t make it for his class, down to our integrity. And that’s coming for my lack of integrity where I told him I can’t attend a make up class on Deepavali cuz IZ*ONE anniversary café… I am self-destructing on the Internet as I’m writing lads y’all didn’t see anything I was at Malaysia, but hey I just made it up by going for 2 hours of the Wednesday class (remaining 2 hours I had to yeet to Comp Sec lecture) and he’s chill with it.

Group Project and Assignments are both chill. The assignment can technically be done by a single person but yea everyone in our group (except for exchange student it’s ok we let him enjoy life here yea) will just vet through. It’s just playing with Excel, you can actually submit an Excel file for the assignment and call it a day. Project has no math, just research on a service establishment of your choice and do a writeup however you want. 6 pages can most definitely be done up in 3 days or so, PowerPoint give it about 2 more days including rehearsal. My group started only 1 week before since we prioritised other projects and we’re fine~

The quizzes are… can I retract my statement saying that this is an easy mod? The quizzes are daunting. I forgot. Maybe my brain likes to forget traumatic events lads. Open book quiz. First half is a bunch of 1-mark MCQ (it’s not easy, heck it’s not necessarily from the slides too but… ^{+|-|3|23 !5 4 ?|_|35+!0|\\| 84|\\||(}. I cannot elaborate.). Afterwards it’s a few multi-part math questions. Those are PAINFUL. You can finish MCQ in 15 mins and spend the next full 2 hr 45 mins doing the math part. Or just leave early and raise the white flag. But I think I got an ok score (we can see those) so cheers~

CZ3002 – Advanced Software Engineering (CS Core)

Course Coordinator: Dr Shen Zhiqi, Dr Althea Liang

Tutor: Dr Althea Liang

Lab Prof: Dr Althea Liang

Assessment Criteria: Group Project (50%), 1^st half assignment (5%), 2^nd half quiz (5%), Finals (40%)

I find SE more useful and SSAD more relevant to software engineering than this. Well ASE is more about project management, quality assurance kind of stuff. The SDLC in SE is a sm0l part of the full project development so rather than saying it’s fluffy, you just happen to move out of your microscopic views about software engineering. Those looking into the software engineer career field, you’ll not be stuck as a developer for the next 30 years yea so (as much as even I myself don’t like it) you see why it’s needed. That being said, I’ve heard that other foreign unis’ (eg. Waterloo) ASE is legitimately teaching you automated testing in detail I’m just pointing out I don’t expect such a drastic revamp anyway.

Don’t ask me about lectures (said it since Y1 come on I don’t go). Don’t need to watch. You grasp it by the project and just reading the slides will do the work. Tutorials? I didn’t do til week… “15”. 3 days before finals. Amazing. Got solutions so I’m not too concerned. I’ll focus on group project and Dr Liang as our lab prof.

Group project is very documentation heavy my friends! Below is just part of the required documents, haven’t added 11 meeting minutes, 5 backlogs, source code, demo video, presentation slides and… you get it.

Also I just realised, why is my Quality Plan v1.0? Hmm...

The project is 4-choose-1 (or free topic if you want). We chose to do facial recognition for attendance taking (our group, we call it FATS. We are amazing at names). We have arbitrary project roles in accordance to the requirements (eg. Person A is Project Manager, Person B is QA Manager etc.) but our group is basically 3 developers and 4 on documentations. My best bro on development is all the assurance that I need (thanks for tanking as always eheh) so I just needed to push my group to not mess up on documentation. Every lab you submit a few of these but ofc in final lab you can edit the earlier documents and submit finalised versions into MediaWiki and SVN. Btw SVN is not just a “not Github version control”, I think how we use SVN ^{might (not sure)} be an implicit marking criterion since version control is a part of this course. Anyway, lab 4 has a prototype demo (Dr Liang gave my group motherly compliments (~＾∇＾)~) and lab 5 has presentation.

Dr Liang is very nice! Unlike Dr Shen that’s also nice and (I’ll leave him for the SSAD part below), Dr Liang is nice and knows her stuff. Her standards for the project are higher but also to push us ygm? During the live demo, she started asking so much about our training for facial recognition (is she an AI prof IDK) but yea we -more like my best bro actually- answered well and that’s how the motherly compliments came by yayy~

Unlike SE, finals are closed book. I thought I was going to write an essay complaining about my paper here. But I relook at the paper and honestly, for someone who cannot memorise anything, this paper should be easier for me. It’s a bit different from usual (like Q3 is scenario based that’s new). No specific advice for ASE finals. But overall, I’m not very satisfied with my performance so there’s that, that’s all.

P.S. Since I didn’t write up about SE (CZ2006), I actually need to say something about that. So erm I’m the dumbass who did AY1819 S2 PYP solution. And I really have to apologise for the mistakes I made in the solution. Like yknow… forgetting to answer one whole part (but that’s straight from lecture notes so y’all can handle). And black box testing ah I think I might have understated test cases (after comparing with friends) well to be fair I am not confident in a lot of questions for starters I just need $30 don’t mind me. But yes if you wanna ask anything feel free to email me (my school email should be in the solution).

CZ3003 – Software Systems Analysis and Design (CS Core)

Course Coordinator: Dr Lin Shang Wei, Asst Prof Yu Han

Tutor: Asst Prof Yu Han

Lab Prof: Dr Shen Zhiqi

Assessment Criteria: Group Project (55%), Assignment (5%), Finals (40%)

Ahh… the module where I go in expecting to be screwed upside down, but actually ending on a good note (imo). Because every other module is the inverse. SSAD has a reputation of insane project (right behind the darned MDP) so there’s that. More about project later. SSAD arguably feels more like ASE than the actual ASE course OOF. The namesake implies that there is a stronger microfocus on analysis and design phase, and lecture content pretty much follows that.

The project however, really feels like going through the whole SDLC, but larger scale. God I don’t know how to discuss without showing a bit of moral greyness (and it’s 1am when I typed this so I’m not very awake). Ok for starters, the project has notably amped up difficulty. No more web app where you can adapt from senior’s code. We needed to make an educational mobile game. (: Not only that, the requirements are poorly written. IDK if the course coordinator intended that (so that we can exhibit RE techniques and interview stakeholders scheiße). So my best bro + pal are diligent lads going to consult Dr Shen every week. I won’t lie, those 2 lads tank the development as well I legit cannot thank them enough! It’s very ill-advised but I can’t really go PC and lie that all 10 members coded ☹ The rest of us did pull our weights in documentation, we tried so yea. I hope the other groups are doing alright and wishing the best of lucks to my juniors. Sorry if I can’t properly relay the proper struggles of this intense project (I don’t feel too right doing so) but jiayou everyone!

Moving on from my unintended 1am confession, documentation is mainly in the form of SRS, and lots of diagrams. SRS as the very first deliverable is super intense by itself, but everything else after is fine~ Final presentation + live demo during Lab 5! Our group’s time management in presentation is non-existent but Dr Shen really like our group’s app a lot! Good news: he might actually want to see this through ooh~

Alright and finals. The only paper where I felt a little safer (hope that’s not my complacence speaking). Both course coordinators maintained their usual format so that’s nice. Also, Prof Yu Han gave a 30+ mins condensed review lecture. By “condensed” I don’t mean cramming, but he pretty much directed that across the whole 2^nd half, only ~10 slides actually matter. Yes it’s closed book but the scope is really cut down. I like that it’s not as memory intensive as ASE. And not SE level of intense that warrants open-book. The thing with design-based questions from SE and SSAD is that there are no right or wrong answers. Mainly just need to keep consistent design and have justified explanations/assumptions. Oh btw they did ask about group project for one part of this paper. I am a lucky chap because I did documentation for software architecture and yes they ask you about your group’s architecture choice + explain why. *cues Jurgen Klopp BOOM* Overall should be alright, I hope that is my confidence and not arrogance speaking.

CZ3006 – Net Centric Computing (CS Core)

Course Coordinator: Assoc Prof Luo Jun, Asst Prof Tan Rui, Assoc Prof Lee Bu Sung (Francis)

Tutor: Asst Prof Tan Rui

Lab Prof: Different TAs I think

Assessment Criteria: Coursework (40%), Finals (60%)

For this semester (or maybe FROM this semester), this is merged with CE3005 – Computer Networks so a bit of syllabus change. So Prof Luo and Prof Tan both covered first half, and Prof Lee covered 2^nd half. Basically it’s the TCP/IP model, moving up from physical layer all the way to application layer. Useful topic. I would say interviewers would ask a fair bit of networking questions (I got a few) so please try your best! First 2 lecturers are… alright. They did do a bit of in-lecture quiz but otherwise yea at least it’s job done anyway. Prof Lee is quite commendable (coming from someone who only watched his lectures 3 days before paper). If you’re time tight, just try to watch the review lecture (like Prof Yu Han, also a nice focused condensation) and then previous weeks lectures just for the in-lecture quiz. That’s fundamentally sufficient revision.

There are 4 labs and you gotta attend and submit stuff so yea. It’s kinda fun though. Btw they’ll change up the questions every sem, adding the fact that they merged CE3005 and CZ3006. (Not exactly, lab 2 was UDP client-server and I could find senior’s code online but basically not all semesters are guaranteed to have this.) It’s idiot-proof for the most part, coming from someone who did not watch lectures diligently and still managed to hand up passable work. No guarantees on difficulty level since it sounds like they want to change it up. If you look past just copying down what the screen shows you, it gives you a better idea on how networking works in practice so that’s kinda cool, as simple as it is.

Finals was a wild ride my my! If my finals indicate anything about the general trend of finals for this new syllabus, my advice would be to revise your tutorial and lab diligently. Lecture notes just makes sure you get the fundamentals but the questions are actually set like tutorial style, I was shooketh! (Needless to say I wasn’t that diligent and lost marks and time as a result.) That being said, you can expect more theory questions in Q2, while the other 3 questions are more towards math and application. If anything, Q3 and Q4 are set like old CE3005 so you know where to practice. Whereas for Q1 and Q2 I would advise to practice both CE3005 and CZ3006 until you start to see the old papers phase out.

CZ4062 – Computer Security (System Security) (CS TE)

Course Coordinator: Prof Lam Kwok Yan, Dr Tay Kian Boon

Assessment Criteria: Lecture Quiz (2 * 20%), Finals (60%)

*I honestly typed this on a different day – and y’all need a break from reading so interlude – here’s IZ*ONE’s Tom and Jerry for no context.*

I miss IZ*ONE BTW :(

Break over? Alright keep reading~

This is a TE under Cyber Security or Data Science specialisation, and relatively popular mod (almost 200 students in my cohort if I’m not wrong – gauged by how many people I see in LT during our quizzes). If it was a year ago, I might say that this is an easy to score mod. But with the new prof, it’s anything but T^T so that’s the general gist of this module from a practical perspective. Onto what you learn in here, I would say it’s quite a generalise module (for ironically, a technical elective). It’s introduction to fundamental security terms that you’ll need in this field. So in the sense that the depth is not there, but there is breadth. Big (introductory) topics include concepts like access control, and software security (knowing TnG level about different vulnerabilities in a software). I can’t say I can go out to the workforce with these knowledge but it’s still a good start. I like it in general, though my grades is probably anything but. (Hmm I might want to write something about the different certifications and courses that you can take in this field in the future we shall see~)

Back to this module. So we only have a 2hr lecture + 1hr mass tutorial. No lab or project (got this semester), boils down to 2 traumatic quizzes to determine 40%. If I had a choice, I would prefer lab sessions, playing around with the different vulnerabilities instead of just telling us. IDK why they changed the syllabus for the worse to be honest but oh well. I’ll just rate both profs by their lectures, quiz and exams separately. Since both profs really feel like independent entities here.

Prof Lam is… wow I might go ahead and say that he’s one of the best SCSE profs hands down (at least from my 2.5 years here so far). His lectures are really worth listening, he adds in his own anecdotes to make concepts easier to understand. Yours truly actually watched all his lectures diligently so that says a lot. Also nice sense of humour. Quiz-wise it’s easy concept MCQ + short answer questions. By short answer I actually mean at max 2 words answer (unlike 2^nd quiz I’m screaming inside). He felt like he’s there to help us (unlike… ok I’ll save my rant later) so I appreciate it. Exam format is similar (not saying it’s easy cuz there’s still a lot to remember but you won’t get a culture shock unlike…).

Dr Tay recently took over 2^nd half (before that is Dr Sourav I believe). *googles “How to develop Stockholm Syndrome over profs that kill the cohort”* Let me just list any conceivable defense I have at the back of my head… he repeated that he was an NUS prof who recently came to NTU, Math-inclined and his specialty is cryptography. In other words, he’s… well not exactly meant to teach this module. I also hope for the betterment of all parties that he’s a placeholder prof and he can teach his strengths in the near future (maybe not THAT near I’m planning to take crypto next semester *chuckles*). His lectures really don’t need to watch, just read off the slides. It’s hard to get any takeaways from second half simply due to the sheer lack of focus so that’s frustrating for everyone. And yes he added… case studies. Which takes priority over Bell LaPadula Model and Android Mobile Security that’s cute. The SingHealth case study is actually interesting to read (so I like the content I admit) but please do not let profs like him set papers. Effectively he told us to read a 50-page report (I will and did happily read it) but then he gave a set of slides with his own points (not all can be found in the report) one day before the quiz. And the quiz is asking us to LIST. HIS. POINTS. Obviously I messed up when I tried to take note of the report fine prints more than his own points I am not salty at all yea? I am evidently not the only one raging during his quiz, a lot of people are not happy too. And cherry on top, he sent us an email saying he’s not satisfied with our original results so here’s adding 2 marks to everyone’s results to make sure more people pass his quiz. “Have a great day and rest well.” Finals was a change up obviously, and no it’s not for the better. First half wasn’t perfect for me but second half absolutely crushed me, bury me six feet deep. Given the choice (I have spare UEs) I would’ve declared as UE and SU it. But too late, and I will accept the result face front.

CM8002 – Forensic Science (GERPE)

Course Coordinator: Assoc Prof Roderick Wayland Bates

Assessment Criteria: Lecture Quiz (2 * 20%), Finals (60%)

A very popular GERPE that I never intended to take in the first place (it’s actually my 5^th choice) but here I am. I didn’t put in any effort to study but it’s still an interesting mod (the chem terminologies/technicalities aren’t fun at all but the applications and case studies are yay). Content heavy module, which is why I SU-ed it duh! (And considering that BCG has more SU to spare than we have GERPE + UE so using SU is a no-brainer in any case for me.)

Essentially, first half are in the form of LAMS sequence. It starts off with more “boring” (well from the perspective of… not a chem student I’m so done with that after A levels) fundamentals like elements and compounds, to set up knowing what test to use. Then it progresses to more interesting fields like DNA, toxicology, drugs. Every LAMS sequence ends with a quiz for self-practice. The LAMS sequence is deadass reading off the slides 90% of the time so you’re better off just playing it in the background while you read it yourself and watch the 10% where Prof Bates show come coolio stuff in his lab. Speaking of Prof Bates, he’s a funny dude! He’ll have F2F lectures in 1^st and last week, worth going for the banter. And for last week, he will go through more case studies (examinable mind you!) and past exam questions.

Second half are guest lectures that are not recorded. It’s not a big chunk of examinable stuff like first half, but still examinable. And some of these lectures (I can’t say all, I was a bit detached to some lectures not gonna lie) are interesting. Basically they are actual professionals from Health Science Authority, Central Narcotics Bureau and all the shazam of organisations that you’ll associate with forensic science scene in Singapore. With all reasons stated above, highly recommended to sit in and absorb whatever you can.

Onto quiz and exam format. Both quizzes have 25 questions each. To save paper and the trees, the quiz will be conducted by flashing questions on the LT screen for 2 rounds. ~40s for first round and ~30s to just check in the second round. Istg I’m just flexing that I never studied but yes once again, I barely studied and still got above average both times. I mean MCQ I did whack my way lah but yea. For finals it’s 40 MCQs (but you get a paper proper) + a scenario-based question. I manage to finish the paper in 1 hour sharp but waited 15 mins more for people to leave the exam hall so don’t worry about time at all. Oh right and you can’t find PYPs online. You only get past scenario-based questions from week 13 lecture itself and no practice for MCQ (it’s probably a question bank so why risk posting potentially similar questions?). And you submit the actual exam paper instead of bringing it home which would probably explain why no seniors are sneaky enough to post PYP online lah pfft.

I never really have an A+ war plan. But I can say that you should pay attention to case studies. From my (lack of) studying, pure theories can kinda be instinctively deduced, whereas case studies need more effort to remember (eg. the first use of DNA in forensic science is to prove innocence and other options are things like proving guilt yea not something anyone can deduce without studying). In other words, you can still piece a bit of knowledge from theory, but case studies’ details you just know or don’t know. Scenario-based questions have no ONE definite right answer. You just amp up your analytical skills and give logical answers (btw you can get 5 marks in one line. Don’t write too much there’s a box restriction.). I quite like the scenario-based question cuz it’s more idiotproof for my goldfish memory 😊 So yea here’s to the module that I never intended to take but GERPE’s down for me now so lesser worries about bidding for electives~

I apologise for the lack of emojis in this post (unlike my usual writing) since I decided to just type things up in Word doc before transferring over. But thank you for bearing this handful of sh*t to read. I don’t think I’ll write about Y2S2 (since a lot of things would’ve slipped off my mind by now) so I’m so sorry about that. Bobi for my results for Y3S1. And bless my Y3S2 (the dreaded MDP looming). And… how do I normally end my posts even oh my god sh*t… well cheers everyone! Happy New Year in advance btw!