NUS FACULTY OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

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NUS FACULTY OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

41.

Mdm Ho Geok Choo asked the Minister for Education (a) what is the yearly student intake of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences; (b) what is the distribution of the intake between those from the Science stream and those from the Arts stream; (c) what is the basis for the successful enrolment of Science students over Arts students into that Faculty; and (d) what are the options available to Arts students who were unsuccessful in their enrolment.

Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam: The NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) takes in an average of 1,400 undergraduate students every year from the A-level cohort. Of the A-level intake into FASS this year, 55% were Arts stream students and 44% Science stream students. While the proportion of Arts stream students in the FASS intake has hovered around the same level over the past three years, the proportion of Science stream students has increased.

This increase is largely accounted for by the phasing out of the Commerce stream in Junior College since 2001, which has produced a larger gain in the number of Science stream students, compared to Arts stream students, in Junior Colleges and Centralised Institutes. Students with at least one A-level Commerce subject accounted for 2% of the FASS intake in 2004, down from 9% two years ago.

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The selection of students for university admission is based on merit. Applicants are admitted on the basis of their A-level performance as well as a Faculty Score. For admission to the FASS, NUS has no special subject prerequisites, and does not distinguish between Arts and Science students. However, students with exceptional achievements in a particular area may be considered for admission on a discretionary basis, independent of their A-level results. A student with outstanding achievements in literature, for example, may be considered for admission to FASS on that basis.

Besides NUS FASS, there are other enrolment options for Arts stream students in NUS as well as NTU and SMU. Possible courses they can consider include Business Administration and Building and Real Estate at NUS, as well as Accountancy and Business at NTU and SMU. With the recent establishment of the SMU School of Economics and Social Sciences and the NTU School of Humanities and Social Sciences, the options for Arts stream students will increase further.