dagong99:

Hi, may I ask if you are current student in NUSHS, which year ? Yesterday went to popular & national library but can't find the 3 reference books you had mentioned. Are they only available in NUSHS book store ? Do you mind if you can give me the full name of the books ? I use the search engine in the national library but still can't find, guess name may not be correct. Thanks !

I am not a current NUSHS student, but suffice it to say that the school is as old as my education.

Try the Popular branch at Bras Besah and look under the advanced texts section. You should find a fair selection there. NLB carries similar selections. The names I mentioned are authors of the respective books. A quick Google search should give you what you need.

My personal take is that there is no need to make a conscious, excessive effort to study these books prior to entry. More often than not, these books serve as reference texts rather than actual course content. Part of the fun of the NUSHS system is ostensibly the development of independence by letting students rough it out with the curriculum. It may be tough and it may be daunting, but he/she who makes it through the curriculum alone comes out better prepared than if they were trying to rush ahead the entire way.

The same goes for sourcing for projects and internships, which was mentioned in another post above. The school will actively push opportunities to students when appropriate, but it is good to take the chance to develop skills like writing up cover letters and submitting CVs. These things may not seem significant while in school, but they are crucial for school-leavers to secure employment or places in universities. It is, for example, not impossible to take on multiple high-level research projects, or to intern at an A*STAR RI at Y2/3. Note, however, that possibility is always contingent on capability first.

There’s actually a chance to handle sheep hearts and get a good idea of the ventricles and atria. As with all fresh biological specimens sometimes the experience is limited by the availability.


Physiology and Anatomy is covered, and integrated under the normal curricula. Students will likely encounter bits and pieces in the formative years, then move on to the actual module in Y5/6. Specimen handling is a must in almost all labs, so mounting, staining and observation are part of that process. There’s no real delineation of these skills into a specific module.

IMHO the content covered in microbiology, ecology, etc. is hardly adequate as concrete experience for work in A*STAR RIs. Specimen mounting and cultures can be done in a variety of ways, and it is much more likely that individual labs adapt these "standard practices" to suit the needs of their research, which is at a much higher level. For example, in schools, cultures are stained by first mounting the specimen (normally using water), then drawing the stain under the cover slip by using capillary pressure. In labs, however, where the quality of a stain is imperative for results, the sample will be fixed using a chemical agent, likely treated, then stained with multiple passes by immersion. Residue stain will be flushed before a cover slip is applied. A lot of IMCB’s work is based off genetics and microfluidics. Microscopy is almost always phase-contrast, fluorescent or SEM instead of compound or stereo-microscopy. The know-how for this content, realistically speaking, is almost always acquired as part of the induction process to the specific research project. No doubt, the core skills remain the same, but their use and application is rarely immediately apparent.

Been following this thread for some time and would like to clarify the following:


1) NUSHS bookshop does not sell past-year examination papers.

2) Instruction in classes comes from lecture notes and only in certain classes are textbooks utilized. At the junior level, purchase of textbooks is not particularly useful since they are quickly outgrown. A more reliable text to purchase, for example, would be:

Biology - Campbell and Reece
Chemistry - Chemistry3 for general, Clayden for Organic
Physics - Young and Freedman or Jewett and Serway

And to preempt the question as to where these books can be purchased - they are not easy to come by at local stores. The school bookshop should stock them, and sales options are normally made available when there is definitive need and use for them. Elsewise, copies are normally available in the library.

3) NUSHS students do not dissect goats or rabbits. The biohazard clearance required for organisms with potential for carrying blood-borne diseases is higher than that of NUSHS labs. Students will have the chance to dissect frogs and mus musculus (a type of rodent). At the Bio Olympiad level, where training is conducted under the purview of a different organization, the dissection may include insects and other small organisms.