Nathan Law Kai Kiat

What is one thing you were unprepared for about university life that you wish you knew before joining SMU?

The sheer number of opportunities you can find just by asking and reaching out. I think when entering a new stage of life, it is easy to feel worried about the feelings of disappointment or failure or academic stress that tags along with the academic hurdle of university life. However, these feelings like feeling stressed about an exam were not much different from how it was when I was in IB. What was different was the fact that

unlike lB, now you can ask your former teachers if they had any Research Assistant openings so that you can continue to learn and improve under them. Now in university. companies are looking for you because SMU has a very prominent and strong reputation in multiple industries across the country and by being an SMU student, you are already positioned as a candidate that has displayed some valuable skills to even be accepted as a student at SMU. So I had to leam how to be a bit more keen and open to new opportunities by asking for them.

What is your career aspiration and how have SMU’s career prep programmes helped you in making progress towards your goals?

My career aspiration is to do clinical psychologist and be a youth psychologist. While SMU may not be on the forefront of Singapore’s clinical psychology front, it has built up my confidence and exposure in the area of research such that it empowers me to use those skills to further my own research of clinical psychology related topics. On the career prep front, it has allowed me to enter a prominent healthcare provider industry in Singapore to understand the managerial decisions and challenges that hospitals as a whole face. By understanding the hospital, it provides me with knowledge on how I can be a more valuable hospital employee as a clinical psychologist in the future by knowing what are the considerations that my managers will face.

What advice would you give to prospective students who are thinking of applying to SMU? 

All 16 values of the IB learner profile is touched upon in SMU through their own teaching pedagogy and the lesson of perseverance we took away from writing our 4,000 words extended essay is valuable preparation stepping foot into SMU. At the very least, because of that, you are well prepared and well equipped to handle the academic rigour of SMU!