Once I get my unconditional offer, how long do I have to accept it and pay the deposit? Heard it might be 10 business days but can’t confirm anywhere. Trying to plan around another offer landing around the same time.
Note: I am an international student
Hi everyone, I'm currently trying to make one of the biggest decisions of my life and would really appreciate some honest input from people who've been through it.
For context, I recently graduated from an international school in Singapore. I applied to NUS and NTU for CS, and my counsellor says I have a high chance of getting in (no offers yet). I've also applied to the University of Sydney for CS — I'm almost guaranteed entry there and have been offered a 20% scholarship off tuition. I also have an offer from UCL, but I would not be able to go since it is too expensive.
I don't have any competitive programming or olympiad records. I'm a decent student but definitely not top of my cohort. Here's what I'm trying to figure out:
1. How competitive/cutthroat are CS classes at NUS/NTU really?
I keep hearing about bell curve wars and people being extremely competitive. Is it really that bad if you're not a "star" student? Are there people who are just average but still do fine and enjoy the experience? Or will I be constantly crushed by people with IOI medals?
2. Job hunting as an international student in Singapore vs Australia
How hard is it to actually land a job or an internship in SG as an international after graduating? I know MNCs and banks hire here, but do they really hire internationals fresh out of NUS/NTU, or do Singapore citizens/PRs always get priority? Compared to graduating from USyd and job hunting in Australia, is one significantly harder than the other for non-locals?
3. Is Tuition Grant Worth It?
I know NUS/NTU international students can apply for the MOE Tuition Grant, which comes with a 3-year bond to work in Singapore after graduating. Has anyone gone through this? Is the bond actually a problem in practice, or is it fine since you'd probably want to work in SG anyway? And does it really make NUS/NTU comparable in cost to USyd after the 20% scholarship?
I know NUS/NTU's global rankings are strong, but I'm trying to be realistic about whether I'd actually thrive there vs. having a more comfortable experience in Sydney. Any honest takes especially from international students or people who've worked in SG's tech scene, would mean a lot. Thanks in advance 🙏
I’ve been earning thousands of dollars using ShopBack since I travel a lot for business purposes, and I kinda feel guilty about earning 10% of trip cost when I do so. Agoda doesn’t say anything about ShopBack usage so the company won’t notice either. Does anyone do the same thing with ShopBack?
So I got a PC from a friend and I’ve been losing my mind for 5+ hours on this.
The situation:
∙Transferred my NVMe SSD to my friend’s old PC and tried to do a clean Windows reinstall( before reinstalling, it was working perfectly fine even without the SSD)
∙when I tried to do a clean install, after the first restart It stopped booting entirely after first restart
∙Moved the NVMe back to my original PC — same issue persists now
∙The only way ANY device boots is if my friend’s SATA SSD is physically connected, which has windows in it
The weird part:
It’s not just a boot order issue. Even when I force the NVMe or USB as the primary boot device in BIOS, nothing works. The BIOS flat out won’t boot from anything, not the NVMe, not a Windows USB installer, nothing , unless that specific SATA SSD is plugged in and someone one of my ssd stopped being recognized( but the light flashes)
I tried:
∙Changing boot order and forcing NVMe/USB as primary
∙Clean installing Windows with only the NVMe connected (installation starts but after the first restart the BIOS can’t find any boot device, including the USB)
∙Secure Boot on/off
∙Checked CSM/Legacy vs UEFI settings
∙Clearing CMOS
• clean installing on another motherboard with a different brand, exact same issue persists now…😭
Haven’t tried yet:
∙Updating BIOS firmware
Has anyone seen a motherboard completely refuse to detect boot devices without a SATA drive present? Could this be a Fast Boot issue, a BIOS bug, or something else entirely? Any help appreciated, this is driving me insane.
When I woke up and turned on my TV, the screen was totally messed up for some reason. Seems like the color is completely inverted and there is no way for me to invert the color in settings. Could this be caused by broken backlight or tcon? :(
I’m currently running an RTX 3070 Ti with an i7-11700, and I’m considering upgrading the GPU to an RX 9070 XT.
My main concern is whether the 11700 would bottleneck the 9070 XT enough that the upgrade wouldn’t be worth it. I know moving to an X3D platform would probably be better overall, but upgrading CPU/motherboard/RAM is too expensive for me right now.
Games I mostly play:
BeamNG and AFOP already seem to push my 3070 Ti pretty hard, with high GPU utilization, so I’m wondering if a stronger GPU would still give me a noticeable improvement even if the CPU holds it back in some games.
Would the 9070 XT still be a worthwhile upgrade with the i7-11700, or should I just wait until I can afford a full platform upgrade?