Nanyang Junior College

NY have a refreshing and bright campus. Thats the first impression I got as I walked up the school facade via the main gate for the first time a few years ago during my school event. It really feel very different from what we usually experience in a typical secondary school, much less a much larger school compound. I can't really judge the quality of the materials, teaching standards, or the native culture as I have yet to experience one officially as a JC student. Nevertheless, I am banking it to be one of the few positive ones worth looking forward to.

NYJC itself had a very lively culture instilled when I visited, apart from the feel of weight as one of the top performing junior colleges. Normally it’s quite expected of students to be very stressed on academic work and to be outstanding in co-curricular and special programmes. Nevertheless, most of the students I saw adopted a very positive and proactive attitude and took initiatives in balancing their lives between studies and leisure. It is common to see students gathering around to study together in a lively mood and doing activities of their interest, such as dancing, playing football, tennis, chess, jogging etc. Then again its quite impressing further more to see students able to hold events despite the need to prepare for major examinations, which clearly demonstrated their ability to handle stress and time (and that a couple of them whom I happened to interact with are high flyers in the college). I would say they have the strengths of a good academic environment and culture as well as capable students.

A very pleasant environment. Students there are very capable and proactive, and organises their own events and projects very well. Many of the student leaders even led initiatives to improve their student welfare in various aspects. It is not common to see that in students nowadays. Students elsewhere will just accept and will not step up so much. I think Nanyang JC did a very good job in encouraging such an inclusive and pro-active culture.

NYJC had been very impressive in academics and CCA. However more can be worked in terms of enriching the portfolio of the students to be more all rounded, such as involvements in Service Learning. A lot of us observed that NY students (especially those not holding leadership positions) are generally lacking in their experiences in community service and leadership. Perhaps the school should try take a look at empowering students to initiate more sustainable projects that are meaningful and can be continued and passed down yearly. So far few schools like Hwa Chong had it quite well.

Overall the experience of Nanyang JC was quite alrite. Despite me picking on the lack of maintenance on a number of facilities on campus (which is quite common across Singapore anyway), the whole hilly environment was quite breezy and bright. Half of the college's tutorial rooms are air conditioned (along the level 5 corridors). One thing is that there is not much water features in the college so it will be quite warm in a hot weather.