An Example from IPPT on How to Get First Class Honours in Economics

An Example from IPPT on How to Get First Class Honours in Economics

Alright, today I am going to write about an example from IPPT, on how to get first class honours in economics, or for that matter, how to get first class honours in most majors at NUS in general anyways.

[This is in reference to the original, specific article I wrote a few months back which was the most popular article of all my writings: obviously, simply, and very aptly titled: How to Get First Class Honours at NUS. People apparently liked that more than religion, science, mentalism, magic, psychology, and other magical intellectual hobbies of mine.]

I've been receiving a lot of emails on that post, with people asking me about how to get first class and other related topics about academics, on how to study, how to do well in exams, and all that kind of thing. And so I've decided to "pander" to my readers and write a single illustrative story, which, when understood, will help you gain insights into performing better for tests and exams in general, and will definitely contribute to you getting first class. It's all in the moral.

It's a moral that we all know but need to reminded here and there, and now and then.

Most likely if you're a good friend of mine you've heard this story a million times, and I apologise in advance.

I was training for the IPPT some time back, and in any case had been passing it ever since I left full time National Service. However, for one reason or another, during that one particular period, I had a string of failures in a row, and my birthday was fast approaching.

This was weird - my training routine hadn't changed, and I was doing the same methods which had gotten me the "pass" incentives, so what was going on? (I ended up in RT for that year, by the way, so there's a poem I wrote on Eye Pee Pee Tee. Pity!)

I trained every day, and yet was going nowhere. I just "couldn't hit the cow's backside with a banjo".

One day, my brother happened to pass me by to take a phone call, when he saw me doing push ups. When he was done with his call, he told me what the problem was.

I'll try to recreate this, it was some time back: "Hey man, what are you doing?" he asked.

I said, "Pushups! To train for chin ups. I'm going to do 40, like when I passed the last round."

He said, "That's not how you do it! You're just going through the motions. You have to squeeze the back muscles, and use this part, and that part..." and he promptly jumped to the floor and did it, the "proper way".

"Doing 20 proper push ups is better than doing 40 rubbish ones," he intoned severely. "You didn't do it like that last time, when you were younger, anyways," he said, "You'd do all the exercises properly rather than as if they were chores and you had to rush through them."

That was it! Voila!

To cut a long story short, I passed my IPPT that year, after doing the first phase of RT. I got the point of the story, and it's stayed with me ever since. It's something we all know but we don't do.

It's the same with IPPT and it's the same with studying for Economics examinations.

The moral is this: when we train for IPPT with passing in mind, we don't just do the training half heartedly, or just do it for the sake of doing it. We will exert maximum effort. We will make sure the part of the muscles we are training get the full brunt of the effort. To put it one way, if you're doing the bicep-curl at the gym - you make sure it's the biceps that are doing the work and you're not swinging your arm up and down to make use of momentum.

Same goes for studying, and especially for Economics.

I am pretty sure that most of my classmates learnt the same things as I did in Economics class, but they didn't get the first class because they just couldn't score in the examinations. CAP was the main problem. Why?

[I'm generalising here. Not all were like that, of course.] They could do the tutorials because they copied them from their classmates. Some of them formed study groups, but didn't really, really study. They went through the motions in class, and only parroted what the lecture notes said. They sat in classes and daydreamed. Some of them read their materials and took it face value. Some of them dropped out of economics in their third year with a pass or merit degree. Some made it to honours year by smarts.

So when it came to answering thinking questions in the exams, or answering harder questions, they all got murdered.

Here's the attitude of the first class student:

How can I do the tutorial, by myself? What are the mistakes that I have made here? What are the different methods? If I don't know, who knows? Who can I ask? Let me try this again. What can I do?

Let's take a simple case, profit maximisation.

What are the different methods of solving this? The first is to use a graphical method. The second is to use the Lagrangian method. The third is to use the constrained to unconstrained method.

A good student will know this and apply this. An average kid will stick to one method and use it all the time. The poor student didn't even know about the various techniques. But what about the first class student?

The first class student will know the various assumptions behind why it is like that; what assumptions need to hold before the FOCs can be taken like that. He will also know which method is quicker for various questions, because he practised them already, over and over again. He can use the various methods at will - and understands the logic of the various methods. He might even know the preference ordering theory, WARP, the various mathematical conditions of monotonicity and continuously differentiable indifference curves, and all that kind of stuff behind the simple idea of profit maximisation. In other words, he doesn't take this for granted. He checks things out, he learns more than what lies on the surface, and he is interested in his studies.

So the moral of the story is, to get first class honours, it's all about the way you approach the subject.

It is not purely about raw hours you put in; in those hours did you really understand the subject and get the logic, memorise the steps, do the problems, try exam questions, look at textbook problems, and work them all out yourself, using various methods, and cross checking your solutions when using different methods or approaches?

Or did you spend those study hours talking with friends, chatting, doing only tutorial questions, and basically going through the motions of real, diligent, hard work? Or did most of the work, but when the hard questions came by, you ignored them or left them blank? I think the moral of the story is quite clear!

Hope you liked the moral of the story. Good luck with IPPT if you came by because of that; good luck with your studies and examinations if you came by thanks to the "Get First Class Honours in Economics" :) :) Thanks for reading and cheers.

PS Yeah, I pander to my readers sometimes. I admit! But here we call it demand-and-supply curves.

Anything that interests me!

How to Get First Class Honours in Economics at NUS

How to Get First Class Honours in Economics at the National University of Singapore (NUS)

I noticed that this is the most popular post on my blog, with thousands of views each year. I've made some edits to this post for language, clarity, and context on 24 April 2020. I've also added bonus material to enhance the post. Hopefully, this keeps this article relevant and useful. 

I am delighted that I received my First Class Honours [equivalent to obtaining Honours (Highest Distinction) in today's context] and can finally graduate from NUS. 

My education has been an enriching experience for me in terms of meeting many interesting people, going on student exchange, and all the things that I have learnt there - German, economics, history, USP modules, and relationships. So, it is time to give back and share some pointers on how to get First Class or Highest Distinction in Economics. 

How does one get a First Class Honours in Economics at NUS?

I think no one can say definitively how to get a First Class or Highest Distinction in any discipline, let alone one as difficult as Economics. 

But I can share some strategies or experiences, and those can maybe inspire or help you achieve your goal. 

1. You have to be willing to work long and hard. I mean really long hours and hard work. Long hours: I spent between five to twelve hours in the Central Library every day - on top of lectures and tutorials. Hard work: for instance, for Econometrics - a bane of existence for most undergraduates unless they're math majors - I did the entire textbook... at least thrice. 

In any case, the harder something is, the more valuable it is. In a similar vein, the harder it is to get First Class or Highest Distinction, the more valuable the final result. 

2. You need to get help for mathematics and statistics. Unless you're a math major or a stats major, it is very likely that you're in the same position as I was - you know some math and some stats, but you can't seem to prove the Stolper-Samuelson theorem or Rybczynski theorem. 

I mean, even though I did the module and once knew how to do to the Rybczynski theorem by heart, it was thanks to getting good help from my trusty friend, Mr Quek. He helped me out also for Econometrics 2 - a killer module. Get help from real mathematicians or real statisticians. They can help us. 

I have to point out that getting prepared for university economics by doing mathematical economics is useful, but insufficient. University economics is a lot harder than it seems, unless you are once again a math or stats major. 

Taking this to a broader point, you have to will yourself to do better in maths and stats. Brush up on whatever fundamentals you had earlier, and commit to doing as much math and stats as you can stomach. It has worked for me, and will likely work for you too. 

(There's a related point here, on econometrics. The vast majority of human beings do not find econometrics easy to do. Only a certain rare breed breeze through econometrics, or can understand the beauty of vectors. I was not one of them. But through hard work, paying a lot of attention to my weaknesses, and hours in the library, I managed to overcome not one, but two, econometrics modules and obtained good grades for them. This just goes to show you that it is possible if you try. Don't give up on econometrics just yet.)

3. You need to get friends. This is related to point 2, but point 2 is about the importance of mathematics and statistics and how your A level math or whatever isn't going to give you any advantage. 

Friends on the other hand... help you with tutorials, help you with lectures, lend you materials, give you heads-up... what else can I say? Get friends who are good at economics! Quod erat demonstrandum. 

Taking this to a broader point, you'll come to realise that studying is not entirely a solitary event. If you are able to have a group of friends who can inspire you, help you, and even better still, challenge you, you will learn and grow. Think of it in a positive way. 

4. You need to get a good supervisor, and start working early on your thesis. 

This is because in NUS, when I was a student there, one needed to get an A- or better for the thesis to get First Class Honours, on top of a sterling CAP of above 4.5. 

Nowadays, I understand things are different. 

But it would not hurt to get a good supervisor, who cares about you and your grades, and who wants to help you succeed. I have been blessed to have had a supervisor who cared for me and wanted me to do well. I have also been blessed that two of my ISM Professors (Independent Study Modules) helped me hone my research skills with their care, concern, and content. It just goes to show that it makes a lot of sense to search for a good supervisor early. 

In a similar vein, if you start working hard on your thesis earlier, and get a head start on understanding what it is you are researching on and compiling your datasets, the race is half won. 

These are relatively self-evident arguments, so I won't explain further. 

Finding a good supervisor and a good thesis topic, fruitful for research, are all topics that can take up entire posts or even entire blogs!

5. You need some luck. If you're reading this post, I'll have to be really honest with you and say that luck plays a small but significant role. 

As the years go by, and I look back upon my academic achievements, I can honestly say that it pays to be lucky. So perhaps, pray hard for luck. 

Not everything is due to you. We cannot know everything. Be intellectually humble. 

It was luck that I found a substitute topic for my behavioural economics thesis on reference points.

It was luck that when I ran econometric models, they turned out well after all and I found loss aversion, the result that I was looking for.

It was also luck that despite me not being able to solve the mathematical problems inherent in my research methodology, I still got a First Class as the examiners were willing to see beyond the mathematics. It was a challenging yet interesting topic, after all. It was a hard fought battle but luck was on my side.

I have to mention this: I can't find the site, but there was once a girl called Audrey (Lin? I believe) who wrote about her getting First Class Honours at NUS as well. She had a challenging last semester, doing all sorts of hard modules on top of the thesis, and then eventually she got her degree. She seemed to have a harder time than me (I completed the USP in Year 4 Sem 1.) 

However, she attributed it to God helping her (in addition to thanking her family). I think that was humble and correct of her. She is absolutely right. When it comes to studying and research, hard work is important, but luck plays a significant role.

Anyways, I've to conclude now. 

Once again, thank you to all my friends and your kind support! 

If you're an undergraduate at NUS seeking that elusive First Class (Highest Distinction) at NUS, good luck to you and do keep my advice in mind. 

We "old birds" know how hard it is, and respect you if you're willing to give your degree your best shot. Consider it a tournament. Consider the degree valuable. After all, I myself did enjoy my research before getting my honours. 

And best of luck! 

Anything that interests me!