went to cut my hair in the morning
not bad
lunched with allan, guo hao, zhen hao and ling
the econimical rice guy has an attitude prob
ok nvm

bused home and then got ready for the interview
by the time i got ready was like 2.10
as i was going to be late
i cabbed down

reached there and sat ard for awhile
then at 3 we were led to the preparation room
there were student volunteers (i'm assuming they were this)
who checked our results, and then gave us some stuff to fill up
these stuff would be used during the interview
we each got a reading to read thru
then had to fill up 4 questions in bullet points
1. what makes you curious?
2. examples of your hardwork?
3. examples of your leadership?
4. passion for IT?
then we had to look at a poster
the poster was an example of a problem solving technique
where you used assumptions to estimate the numerical answer to the question
further elaboration below
after these, we got to watch a short video about some of the SMU students
stuff like their experiences here and all
this whole preparation thing lasted for like an hour
so at 4pm we headed for the interview

so the interview is a group interview
my group had 4 other ppl
so after a brief wait outside the room
we were led into the room
we each had those name labels in front of us on the table
so the professors (the students like to call them profs) had some small talk with us
then started the interview

the first part was to briefly explain the passage we read in 1 - 2 mins
so the prof asked who wanted to start first (we sat in a sort of J shape)
so i looked to the left and saw everyone else just look in every direction except the profs
seizing the opportunity i volunteered and probably explained my passage in abit more than a min
then the rest did theirs
the second guy was damn funny
firstly he kept repeating the words "actually" and "basically"
then he talked like for 4-5 mins
the prof was about to stop him when he finally stopped

the second part was the question we had to solve using the assumption method we read in the preparation room
so basically we had a piece of paper to do our working
and it was like this
we had 3 min to solve this question
" how many people travel on the North East (NEL) Line on a working day?"
i'm proud to say i got my answer within this time
this is what i did
Assumptions
4,000,000 ppl in s'pore
3,200,000 ppl travel on a working day
1,000,000 ppl take the train on a working day
30% of the passangers use the NEL
therefore my estimate would be 300,000
we had to explain my answers and i felt that the profs kinda made sense of my solution la

third part was were the profs questions us about the answer we wrote to the 4 questions la
that part was ok
my question was "what makes me curious" and "example of my leadership"
it was during the "what makes me curious" question that i got shot at by the prof
other than that it was ok

the last part, we had to answer these questions
"why SMU?" and "why SIS (School of Information Systems)?"
this part went well la
so that was it then we had a discussion with the 2 profs
where we could ask them anything we wanted
and that concluded the interview

i felt good and confident during and after the interview
ling asked me if i was confident and i said 70% (cant be over confident)
lav says i surely go in
i hope so
if i don't
you die ah
i'll eat all the ice cream in the world and become fat and force you to carry me everywhere we go
can ah?
:p