Ten students from various programmes at Sunway University seized the opportunity and attended the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) Summer School last year.

The following are some of their penned down thoughts regarding their breakthrough experiences.

For Alice Voong Shew Yin, she recalled the sense of inferiority at the beginning and how it slowly faded away, as she built her confidence to interact with different people.

“My first day of the LSE Summer School was intimidating. During self-introduction, I noticed my classmates were from prestigious universities such as Harvard, MIT, UC Berkeley, and HKU. Later, I found them approachable and humble despite their impressive backgrounds. I began to realise that everyone is equal and it is important to have confidence in our abilities,” said Voong.

Voong, who is studying the BSc (Hons) in Accounting and Finance at Sunway University, took the Competitive Strategy and Game Theory course while at LSE.

Chok Ka Lok, who is pursuing his BA (Hons) Entrepreneurship, found it interesting to have discussions with a large diversity of people from around the world.

“The teaching methods are similar to what is offered at Sunway University, except that there was consistent sharing of relevant cases for case studies,” explained Chok.

Chok also added what he gained from the discussions, “We found out that theories learned cannot always be applied to the real world because real-life examples sometimes proved otherwise.”

Chok took a course in Business Strategy in International and Emerging Markets and stayed at Duchy House, a stone's throw away from LSE.

“The time in LSE opened my eyes to a new world and enabled me to view things from a different perspective. You hear different exciting stories and you learn to understand each other’s beliefs,” said Khor Xin Wei from the BSc (Hons) in Actuarial Studies as she recounted her experience.

Khor chose the subject Introduction to Data Science and Machine Learning and found it extremely exciting.

“I had the most fun with the last topic on text analysis where we learned how to extract data from websites and analyse tweets from influential people like Barack Obama and Elon Musk,” Khor shared.

Another student, Marie Augustine Lafontaine, from the BSc (Hons) Business Management, took Business Strategy in International and Emerging Markets.

She also loved the classroom diversity and how tutorials were arranged to prompt collaboration, discussion, and teamwork.

“The classrooms were not only diversified based on nationality but also their study backgrounds. This surely helps in terms of getting a diversified world view to solve the different cases,” she explained.

Ng Jian Long was blown away on the practicality for the course he took.

“Referencing the course Introduction to Data Science and Machine, the lecturer demonstrated sample problems and codes, explained what each code does, and why he used it for that particular problem,” Ng said.

Ng has since completed his BSc (Hons) in Actuarial Studies and the LSE Summer School managed to prepare him to launch into his career.

“I honestly had a preference to work alone but the experience prepared me for the working environment by opening myself to work in groups,” said Ng.

Yeo Jie Wei, who has also since completed her BSc (Hons) in Actuarial Studies, liked the way classes were held in LSE because the teaching method provided more flexibility for students to learn independently and to expand their creativity.

“At LSE, the programme requires more self-learning to understand the subject well,” said Yeo.

Aside from classroom experiences, the summer school was also fun for the 10 students from Sunway University who would often gather for sightseeing trips and dinners. The group of students even went the extra mile to organise an extra outing to Brighton.

Based on the students’ summer school testimonials, studies abroad and student exchange programmes are, no doubt, great opportunities for students to widen horizons in the academic and cultural aspects.

This article appeared in Blaze (Issue 52).