Grants and Writing Resources for National University of Singapore

At the 2025 ICPC Asia Ho Chi Minh City Regional Contest, three final-year computing undergraduates, teammates since their first year, won in a field of more than 120 teams, the NUS School of Computing's first victory at the regional in Vietnam. Research talks count as well. An entrant from the Faculty of Science took 1st Prize at the 2025 U21 Three Minute Thesis Competition, according to the NUS Graduate School's 3MT page. At NUS the competition is open to PhD candidates who have passed their qualifying examination.

Undergraduate Research

Science undergraduates can do an independent project with faculty through the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme in Science (UROPS). A one-semester project earns 4 units and a two-semester project 8. Students need a GPA of 3.00 or higher, plus one completed semester for a level-2000 project or three for level-3000.

Undergraduate projects can be nominated for the university-level Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Prize. In AY2025/2026 the College of Design and Engineering, which nominates its top ten Innovation and Research Award projects, saw eight projects recognised at university level: seven took the prize and one won the Distinguished Undergraduate Researcher Prize in the Group category.

Fellowships and Graduate Funding

The President's Graduate Fellowship goes to full-time PhD candidates who show exceptional promise or accomplishment in research. It pays full tuition and a monthly stipend of S$4,800 for Singapore citizens, S$4,400 for permanent residents and S$3,900 for international students, renewable for up to four years. In Arts and Social Sciences, up to three incoming PhD students a year also receive the Dean's PhD Fellowship, which covers tuition and living expenses in the final year, after the NUS scholarship ends, so they can finish writing the thesis.

Graduate research students have two more sources of money, both listed on the graduate funding page of the Department of English, Linguistics and Theatre Studies. The Travel Grant for Conference Attendance gives full-time graduate research students partial support to present papers at local and international conferences. The Graduate Research Support Scheme funds fieldwork tied directly to a master's or PhD.

Presenting Research

PhD candidates who have passed their qualifying examination can enter NUS 3MT, run by the NUS Graduate School, and explain their thesis in three minutes. The NUS final pays $400 to the winner, $300 and $200 to the runners-up, and $100 for each Audience's Choice award. The top three represent NUS at the Singapore 3MT Meet, the route to the Asia-Pacific 3MT Competition.

Student Journals and the Thesis Repository

Law students run the Singapore Law Review, described on the Faculty of Law's clubs and interest groups page as an independent legal publication body run exclusively by students. The same page lists Justified, a student sub-club that reports on the school and beyond on its website.

PhD and Master's (by Research) theses from September 2003 onward are held in ScholarBank@NUS, along with some undergraduate and coursework theses from January 2018. Each thesis is open to the public, restricted to the NUS community or closed, depending on the setting the author or department chooses.

Help With Writing

The Centre for English Language Communication runs the NUS Writing & Communication Hub, where peer tutors meet any NUS student about course papers, honours theses, graduate research and publication, creative writing, fellowship applications and presentations. Book online.

Thesis writers have their own service. The Hub's Graduate Communication Support Space offers one-hour consultations, in person or online, with graduate consultants who advise on structure, argument, style and tone in the student's field, whether the master's or PhD is just starting or nearly done.

Our editors work with NUS writers at the final-draft stage, from seminar papers to dissertations. See our National University of Singapore dissertation and thesis editing and National University of Singapore essay editing pages, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.