Recently I received an unsolicited invitation to a one-week ‘international student conference’ in Singapore. The sender had hijacked a facebook group for another student conference I had attended and spammed its list of members with this invitation. Prima facie, the invitation looked pretty good. They offered to pay return airfare to Singapore for all participants, and international travel is typically the largest cost component of participating in these kinds of events (the rest is usually sponsored).

The invitation then added a brief note that participants would be responsible for other fees, conveniently omitting that these fees were around USD 4000 (about twice as much as a comparable two-week summer program at the local public university). The invitation then included a short paragraph explaining that blogging about them would be met with legal action under Singapore’s infamous defamation laws.

Reading their website didn’t inspire much confidence. The site design was almost identical, down to the very source code, to the sites of certain government agencies and academic institutions. Some of their documents were word-for-word the same as those for other conferences. I suppose imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but this was really inexcusable.

After tracking him/her down, I confronted the organizer of this conference with these. His/her reply (verbatim):

I am [person’s name], the overall in charge of the organizing committee for the [fancy name of conference]. I am also the Chairperson of the [conference].

Firstly, I wish to let you know that i am an undergraduate student, currently at [good university], previously from [good high school]. The entire project is funded by [some official-sounding organization]. The entire organizing committee, who are also undergraduates coming from universities such as Harvard, Princeton, Cambridge, Oxford etc and are very grateful for the opportunity that [some organization] has been providing us, as well as the opportunity to work with international students in year 2010. If you can help us with that, that will be good. But the committee do not welcome any undue obstacles especially after hearing from our student ambassador, [other person], who is a close friend of mine, being interrogated by some unknown authority.

Honestly speaking, the conference aims to create thus opportunity for high school and undergraduates to tackle global issues. From day 1 of the conference, defining the problems and proposing resolutions, then day 2 is already about creating the logo of the organizations that students will be going ahead with the proposed resolutions. The entire conference is task oriented. We are daring to make a move on this, and wish to have this opportunity to work this out. [some organization] has given us this opportunity, so has all the invited speakers, [local university VIP] and the rest who wish to see the potential development in the conference proposals and putting them immediately into work.

Just sit and watch how we can deliver the standards. Personally, i don’t like the kind of tone and your style of writing. Truely exceptional students want to do something to help and contribute to the betterment of this world, not to deter such change. I believe you want to do something that changes the world for the better as well. We have already started, thus finding the opportunity to do so. I do not want to kill an idea we have built from last year till now, and hope you are not the cause that make us lose that opportunity.

I believe no matter what kind of organizations, be it private limited company, sole proprietor, public or non-profit organization, if you are doing something that contributes to the betterment of the society or nation, then the end result is worth commendation. There is a regulatory authority that keep track of the things and systems that would need to fall in place. I believe it is not the job of anybody who wish to be that authority. After the conference, the fundings will go into scholarship to be given to students who come from poor backgrounds and also to fund the resolution projects initiated by the students attending the conference. Why not you wait for the post conference press release?

Returning back to you regarding the Defamation act, it was an initiative by us, the organizing committee, because we foresee difficulty while countering the fact that the conference is being held in singapore for the first time. A comment posted online will tarnish the reputation of all relevant organizations involved, so we took the safe approach to prevent anyone posting the same. That is to be fair to all relevant organizations as well. You cannot underestimate things that have unlimited complications. The posted comment online will be there forever, thats why legal actions to retrieve back such erosion to all cooperating organizations is necessary. Singapore government has been practising that as well. I am sure you are well informed about the regulatory freedom of speech in singapore. We have consulted a lawyer, father of one of the organizing committee, that this could be one way to prevent unwanted and irresponsible comments. The committee wish to focus on the operations, and deliver a good conference. Thus, we feel such Act reminds people to be responsible for their actions. I mean, if you say things that cause undue complications for others, undue obstacles that people need to spend extra effort to overcome, then be responsible to cover the consequence with justice.

Join us if you want to be part of the team to initiate changes in the world. For i believe you are also a talent, and someone who have a passion in the things that you do. From your followed ups with [other person] via emails, we can tell that you have the best interest at heart. You must have also sacrificed lots of your valuable time too. Join us and be the change.

You just can’t make this stuff up – shameless self-promotion and unwarranted indignation is truly a winning combination. The frightening thing is that he/she, in all likelihood, sincerely believes that they have done nothing wrong or improper, and are doing everyone a great service. Would make a great future bureaucrat, and an even better politician. Keep your eyes on this one!

I recently submitted my thesis to the political science department for honors consideration. I wrote about political competition in autocracies, using the natural or accidental deaths of dictators as natural experiments for succession conditions. My findings weren’t earth shattering – statistical significance is not practical/policy significance – but what I learned through the process was valuable.

1. Start early

I use the verb submitted rather than completed to stress how much of a work in progress it remains, but deadlines are deadlines. A substantial amount of the final text was written in the weeks before the deadline, because I spent most of the nine months of the thesis process in exploratory data analysis and figuring out what the specific question and approach were, and then performing original research, which takes a hell of a lot of time. Early drafts, written in the first half, were completely rewritten and most of the initial text never made it into the final version. The moral of the story is to start early.

You should start thinking about topics by junior fall, take a class or seminar on that topic with a potential advisor in the spring, treat the term paper as a thesis proposal, and use the summer for field research. Most grant applications for field research expenses are due halfway in spring semester, and it can take a while to arrange fieldwork (getting visas, vaccinated, plane tickets etc). Even if you don’t go to the field, it would be a lot better to have a proposal and advisor early on.

2. Pick a contemporary, policy-relevant topic

We were advised to choose a topic of personal interest, since if we didn’t, we would get sick of it quickly. I followed this advice and chose my pet topic, and found that after weeks and weeks of skipped meals and sleepless nights going through archive after archive (protip: pick a topic where there’s good available data in a readily accessible format instead of doing original research!), or running endless permutations of model specifications to get a good fit, I got sick of it anyway.

If you’re going to suffer you might as well suffer strategically, so my advice would be to pick something that has some practical significance, such as a popular contemporary issue, or a specific policy or treatment. This is a good example. Natural experiments are typically not manipulable and hence less policy relevant.

3. Use LaTeX from the beginning

I write up most math and stat assignments in LaTeX, as the math:prose ratio tends to be high, but I write most term papers in Word, since there are typically only one or two equations and tables. Although most theses will also have a low math:prose ratio, I found that I spent a lot of time on formatting, and I could have been more productive if I had invested more time early on automating things. I wrote my draft chapters in Word, and when I had the final draft ready and it was time to format everything, marking up 126 pages and converting all the footnotes into BibTeX was simply impossible. I should have started writing in LaTeX from the start.

LaTeX has a steep learning curve, but the more you use it the easier it becomes, and you can use an editor like LyX to ease the transition from Word. You can also export Stata and R output to LaTeX code, and export from Zotero to BibTeX.

4. Don’t write too much

126 pages is far too long for to comply with most journal submission requirements, which means I am faced with the horrible prospect of rewriting most of it. I’m not sure how it came to be this long – my initial drafts were criticized for terse brevity. To keep the end product short, shoot for something like 50-60 pages including figures, tables, appendices etc. Allocate pages to chapters and sections in an outline, and stick to those allocations when writing out individual sections, or reallocate pages between chapters while holding the total constant.

After having gone through the thesis writing experience, I would not recommend it for everyone, and if you do choose to write one, do it right from the start.

I was the last of the tour group to board the train to Pyongyang at Sinuiju, and all the cabins were full, except for a cabin of mostly middle-aged Chinese men. Across from my seat was my Chinese roommate for the tour, a college student from Anhui. As I sat down, my fellow passengers were pointing at one of the guides, the fair lady in a yellow hanbok who never smiled. 朝鲜美女 (trans. Joseon beauty), they laughed, come and join us. If she had heard them, she pretended not to.

As the train rolled its way through North Pyong’an, I noticed ragged children sleeping in a shady spot by the train tracks. Even the cows in the fields looked skinny.

(Yanggakdo hotel lobby, Pyongyang) For a country that has officially banned hanja, I guess they know where the credit comes from…

One morning, while my roommate was in the shower, I turned on the television in our hotel room, reminded of Orwell’s telescreen. The morning news show I saw was just like the novel’s description of perpetual war news. Big, black bold comic-book-style headlines superimposed over scenes of crisis and famine. It was as if the world outside was all gloom and doom. We have always been at war with Eastasia.

As I waited in the hotel lobby for the tour group to gather from breakfast, I saw a group of catholic nuns in traditional habits. Among them was an old man in a grey robe with a long, white beard. For some reason, he reminded me of Uncle Ho.

(Kaesong city)

We stopped for lunch in Kaesong city on our way back to Pyongyang from the DMZ. It was a restaurant for tourists, and they had souvenirs and gifts for sale with prices listed in euros. I saw bottles of Ryongtongsul soju across the counter, and asked about them. 8 RMB each. I tried to buy more than two bottles, as gifts for my friends in Beijing, but they wouldn’t sell them to me. Some kind of socialist rationing system, perhaps.

The other tourists were attempting to bargain down the prices of some kind of medicinal herb tonic, which took a long while as our guides translated the back and forth of negotiations. So much for central planner set prices. I stepped outside for some air, onto the wide streets of Kaesong city. It was eerily quiet, without the typical hum of urban activity. As I looked up into the nearby apartments, trying to see how the inhabitants lived, I heard the soft tones of piano keys playing an unfamiliar melody, and wondered if there was Chopin here, or Rachmaninov.

On the remaining drive, the guides sang karaoke for us. We passed by an old woman, her back bent under a bundle of sticks. She looked like she had carried these loads of firewood for a lifetime.

(Pyongyang) They must subscribe to the broken window fallacy here. Except the windows don’t get replaced.

One of our early stops was at the ‘international friendship’ museum at Mohyangsan, where gifts to either elder or younger Kim from around the world were displayed, some of which were quite strange, like an alligator holding a serving tray (Nicaragua). Apart from the Soviet bloc countries, there were some unexpected names there: Billy Graham, various US-based groups I had never heard of before, like the ‘World Council of Democratic Youth’. Gifts from chaebols, and companies based in Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.

At the start of the route was a board listing each country from which gifts had been sent, and how many gifts there were. What interested me the most were 2 gifts originating from Singapore, and although I kept my eyes peeled for them, I could only found one. It was from a ‘Sunko company’. Having seen a gift from Suharto, right next to another from Sukarno earlier, I wondered if the second gift had been from one of our heads of government. After all, they are not so dissimilar.

On our route, we crossed the paths of local tours several times, and they seemed just as curious about us as we were about them. They looked like ordinary people from the rural provinces, wearing plain grey or navy shirts adorned only by little red pins. Very few of the men were taller than I am, and I’m pretty small. Men and women alike had faces weathered and tanned, like they spent all their days toiling in the fields under the hot sun. Not at all like the tall, fair-skinned folk of soap operas.

Ginseng wine loosens lips that could sink ships.

Our, or rather my English-language guide, not being a Chinese speaker, could only talk to two of the tour participants. Myself, and roommate. Armed with my prepared list of ‘safe’ questions and conversation topics, I started with a question about the guide. (People usually love to talk about themselves) Did he have a wife or a girlfriend? He laughed and said that he did not. I then asked when men and women typically marry. Around 30 for men, 25 for women, which I suspected was an urban number. The age of consent is 18, though kids typically start dating secretly while in school at 14 or 15. I replied that it was about the same as Singapore. And then my Chinese roommate asked about whether a hypothetical foreigner (i.e. himself) could marry a local girl.

That was the point the cultural sensitivity alarm bells went off in my head, about the historical relationship between the Korean kingdoms and imperial China, modern issues of cross-border bride trafficking and stories of forced abortions of pregnant repatriates. I hadn’t read Brian Myers’ The Cleanest Race at the time, but I already had some idea about the xenophobic racial purity ideology. And here was a dude from a ‘lesser’ race, asking an elite university student thoroughly steeped in regime propaganda, about stealing away a pure Joseon maiden. This could not end well.

The guide’s eyebrows narrowed. His smile disappeared. No. It is not allowed. I quickly changed the subject to sports and movies. Apparently ‘Titanic’ is popular.

A brief aside: At Myers’ book talk at Columbia a few weeks ago, I asked how the racial purity ideology could be reconciled with an overwhelming economic reliance on China. His answer: It cannot, which is why that reliance is downplayed. I didn’t find this answer satisfactory – how effectively is it downplayed? What happens when it can’t?

(Juche tower, Pyongyang) Salarymen and OLs are Workers too!

We arrived at the Juche tower near sunset. In front of the statue of the worker, peasant, and ‘socialist intellectual’, hundreds of people marched in formation, raising metal rods in the air as they said 만세 (manse, equivalent to banzai 萬歳 or wansui 万岁). I use the term ‘march’ loosely, as they seemed less than enthusiastic about whatever it was they were supposed to be celebrating. Probably something related to Juche.

The only people that were really into it were the ones in front of the formations shouting into megaphones. The rest of them looked like regular people who, after a long day at work, had to spend their evenings on Workers Party duties. One of the tourists, a middle-aged teacher from Shanghai, walked up to the back of the line and joined in. She probably had more fun than any of the real participants. I would have joined in too, had I not been busy snapping pictures, until one of the megaphone-wielding comrade commissars spotted me and cried foul. Fortunately, the guides intervened, and I was spared and survived to write this diary entry.

(Juche tower, Pyongyang) Sunset of the Workers Party?

Previously on Pyongyang Diaries: The Guides

My final semester, in full quant gear. It’s time to man up and math up. If I have to get out of school, I’m going out with a bang, not a whimper.

Required:

POLS C3998x-C3999y Senior Honors Seminar. A two-term seminar for students writing the senior honors thesis.

The thing I worry about the most, all the time. I live in perpetual thesis anxiety. Chris Blattman was right, only commit yourself to writing a thesis if you truly must.

ECON W4921 Political Economy Seminar: The Non-Market Business Environment. The course will apply the lessons of political economy to study the non-market environment within which businesses operate. Topics include lobbying, regulation, media relations, and international trade.

My last required class for the joint major, and it looks like it’ll be fun. Maybe I can get a lobbyist job out of this.

HUMA W1123 Masterpieces of Western music. The course attempts to involve students actively in the process of critical listening, both in the classroom and in concerts that the students attend and write about. The extraordinary richness of musical life in New York is thus an integral part of the course. Although not a history of Western music, the course is taught in a chronological format and includes masterpieces by Josquin des Prez, Monteverdi, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Verdi, Wagner, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington, among others. Since 2004, the works of jazz composers and improvisers, such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Charlie Parker, have been added to the list of masterpieces to be studied in this class.

My last required class for the Columbia core. One of the fun parts of the class is attending an opera, which I almost always enjoy.

Electives:

POLS W4292 Advanced Topics in Quantitative Research: Models for Panel & Time-Series Cross-Section Data 3 pts. This course covers methods for models for repeated observations data. These kinds of data represent tremendous opportunities as well as formidable challenges for making inferences. The course will focus on how to estimate models for panel and time-series cross-section data. Topics covered include fixed effects, random effects, dynamic panel models, random coefficient models, and models for qualitative dependent variables.

With this, I will have completed the entire polisci graduate methods sequence, well, except the basic classes like the ‘math camp’. The equivalent class in the stat department does not seem to be as focused on social science applications, and I’m not sure if I would ever use Fourier transformations or spectral density estimation in my own research (or any finance quant job), so this one seems more appropriate.

MATH W4061 Introduction To Modern Analysis I 3 pts. Real numbers, metric spaces, elements of general topology. Continuous and differential functions. Implicit functions. Integration; change of variables. Function spaces.

MATH V2500x or y Analysis and Optimization 3 pts. Mathematical methods for economics. Quadratic forms, Hessian, implicit functions. Convex sets, convex functions. Optimization, constrained optimization, Kuhn-Tucker conditions. Elements of the calculus of variations and optimal control. (SC)

Last year’s valedictorian, the god of econ, advised me to take 4061 “and ace it”, if I ever wanted to go to econ grad school. Having given up on ever getting into a good econ program, I’m not sure if I really need to take this, especially since I don’t expect to do much formal modeling, though it seems like some people recommend real/functional analysis anyway, as a kind of mental abstraction jujitsu.

After attending the first class, seeing all the math and physics majors there, and struggling with the first ‘Baby Rudin’ homework, I despaired and dropped down to the easier ‘math for econ’ analysis class, that covers only the subset of real analysis most relevant to econ applications, which will probably help motivate me to stick with it.

There is a graceless human tendency to wish upon others the ills visited upon oneself. Instead of pointing successors towards short cuts, you relish seeing them clambering through identical hoops.

The author of this particularly insightful observation was describing her experience advising a prospective journalist. She was asked for advice about how to write a book about Africa in a thoughtless way that was not conducive to actually receiving the desired information (it provoked the sentiments quoted), but she offered some very different and still valuable wisdom. In other words, the person got what they needed, but not what they wanted to hear. Unfortunately, it’s more likely that her wisdom was ignored by the intended recipient.

Sometimes people ask me for advice, and sometimes I offer my advice unsolicited, and in both cases I am usually glad to help and share what I know. But what people want to hear is usually quite different from what they need to hear. On one hand, telling people what they need to hear will probably mean being ignored or disliked, which is counterproductive to helping them. On the other hand, telling people only what they want to hear is not going to help them either, and may end up making me look like an unreliable source of advice too. I try to strike a balance and offer both types of advice, but it occurs to me that it may be better to perfect the art of disguising one as the other. It’s not easy, but I want to try my best to sweeten the bitter medicine of truth.

Most times I get asked about college admissions and applications. I am happy to share whatever I know, though in all honesty, I don’t have much insight into the internal dynamics of admissions processes (only admissions committee members would), at least no more than any conscientious research would uncover. Nor am I well suited to questions about comparisons between universities, only having attended one, and everyone’s mileage varies. But while I may not know the right answers about college admissions, I do know what the right questions to ask are. Here are two recent ones:

1. An acquaintance from my travels who I had helped with graduate scholarship applications earlier (unsuccessfully) was still pursuing her goal of working in the development/aid industry and continued to apply to graduate school. This time, she wanted advice on whether to attend a particular masters program in the EU, which I was unfamiliar with. To answer her questions, I suggested some topics (placement, funding etc) for her to ask the department about. But I also felt that what she needed to hear was whether or not attending this program, or any graduate program, made sense with her career goals, and advised her to rethink it. She wasn’t too keen on that, perhaps because she didn’t have very clear career goals, and eventually decided to attend, despite the lack of funding and a placement history that may not have been a good fit.

2. Another friend was considering applying to LKYSPP and asked me how competitive it was (I have no idea). I gave him my (uninformed) opinions on the program, the usual questions (placement history etc) to ask the school about, and some general information about living in Singapore. However, I thought what he needed to hear about was whether LKYSPP or any other program was the best way to get where he wanted to be, and advised him to consider other alternatives. He didn’t seem to want to discuss that, so I did not press the issue.

In both cases, they had effectively made up their minds beforehand, and my answer was mainly to confirm what had already been decided upon. I was glad to help them with their specific questions, but sad that I failed to also tell them what they needed to hear: that what is on the table may not be in their real interests.

For a long time I’ve considered getting what I want to hear the main problem. Finding the right adviser, asking the right questions in the right way. But the real problem may be about being open to the right advice when it comes my way. How to obtain the job I ‘want’ presently may be secondary to what I would find meaningful and fulfilling over the long term. The latter is a far more difficult problem to solve, and more in need of good advice.

An upperclassman working at an MBB consulting firm told me that it hadn’t been his ideal choice to take up the offer, but it was a highly practical one compared to what he really wanted to do, which he is putting off for one or two years. When I suggested that he should count his blessings, given that I don’t expect to even have an offer to consider taking, he replied, “It’s easy to just take any job, it’s easy to apply for what’s available. Waiting for something that you really want, that’s hard.”

Sometimes I need to remind myself to listen to what God is telling me, even if it’s not what I want to hear.

Dear qui tacet:

Thank you for your interest in Boutique Consulting Firm.

After reviewing your qualifications and our present requirements, we regret that we will not be pursuing your application further at this time. Our decision only reflects an attempt to match the talents of prospective employees with our current openings.

Your resume will be placed in our active file and we will certainly contact you should a suitable position develop.

We appreciate your interest in Boutique Consulting Firm, and wish you success in future job endeavors.

Regards,
Boutique Consulting Firm

Replies to this message are undeliverable and will not reach the Recruiting Team. Please do not reply. (my emphasis)

Was it really necessary to add that last line? Including it just looks mean, and turns off more people than excluding it would have (i.e. some disgruntled applicant that wrote a lengthy reply and got it bounced back).

Here’s a nice one from Google:

Dear qui tacet,

We enjoyed reviewing your application and greatly appreciate the time you spent applying to the Google Start Program. Due to the overwhelming response and limited amount of positions, we will unfortunately not be moving forward with your application at this time.

Here are some tips to help build your resume:

* Don’t settle for the status quo. Seek challenges, take smart risks, innovate.

* Exhibit leadership. Demonstrate your ability to influence and make an impact. Highlight how you have taken initiative and ownership of your results.

* Explore opportunities that enhance your overall background and experience. Demonstrate excellence beyond the classroom and feature activities and skills that make you unique.

For more tips, please visit www.google.com/jobs/students and click on “Getting into Google” on the left pane.

If you have any questions, please email students@google.com. We wish you all the best in your future endeavors.

~The University Programs Team

To be sure, it’s a form letter, but that’s well hidden by the generally positive tone. Moral of the story: If you have to say no, at least say it nicely, and those who know this are probably going to be more successful.

The penultimate semester of my undergrad days. Minimum number of classes, maximum attention to each.

POLS C3998x-C3999y Senior Honors Seminar. The Senior Honors Seminar is designed to help students majoring in political science write a full-length, scholarly paper that is of comparable quality to published work in the field. These papers, or theses, may also qualify the author for an Honors degree.

So I’m in the polisci thesis writing seminar. I wish I had planned this way in advance so I could have used the summer to gather field research (and got a grant to do so). Oh well.

POLS W4291x Advanced Topics in Quantitative Research. This course covers methods for empirical models that have dependent variables that are not continuous. These models include dichotomous and polychotomous response models, models for censored and truncated data, sample selection models, duration models, and models for count data.

Was advised that this was a good econometric methods class for my polisci thesis since it’s likely I’ll have lots of dummy DVs. As far as I can tell I am the only undergrad again. At the first class, one of the phd kids asked me why I had finished the 2nd year requirements before even starting. My answer: teching up, so in the likely event that I do not get into a good program, I can find some kind of quant RA job. Truth is, I’m probably still behind the top econ undergrads in technical skills, especially those kids who did the advanced time-series class.

POLS W3952y Seminar in Comparative Politics. Varieties of Capitalism. This course provides a theoretical framework for understanding the variation in economic and social institutions among advanced capitalist economies. Can we meaningfully talk of the German or Swedish model and, if so, what are their distinctive characteristics? In what ways do these economies differ from liberal market economies, such as the United States or the United Kingdom? Do these cross-national differences persist in the face of increased economic integration and globalization? We will explore these questions by examining institutional and policy differences in the following areas: (a) training and skill formation; (b) financial institutions and corporate governance, (c) the welfare state, (d) systems of industrial relations.

Was advised that this was another good class for my thesis. Although its mostly advanced economies, I’ll pick up more cross-country techniques that could be applied.

PHED C1001x Fencing.

Columbia actually requires me to take a PE class to graduate, so I picked something to fulfill my action-adventure fantasies. Even though its unlikely that I’ll become a master swordsman by end of term. At the first class, our instructor told us stories about fencing during the cold war and how it was seen as a ‘bourgeois’ activity until they realized it was a good source of Olympic medals.

Non-class activities: RA job, GRE prep, language study, apps, job hunting

Congratulations! In the face of a very difficult selection process, one of your photos was selected to be included in the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and Columbia University’s Photography Society’s upcoming exhibition. This is a strong testimony to your talent, as we received over 130 photos submitted and had room for only 25. The jury was very impressed by your work and looks forward to including it in the exhibition.

The photo the jury selected is “Sewing and Reaping.”

The Opening Reception for Views In: Undergraduates Photograph a Year in East and Southeast Asia will be on Tuesday, October 13 from 5-7PM. The location is the exhibition space itself, on the 4th floor mezzanine of the International Affairs Building. I hope that those of you in New York will be able to attend and bring your friends (and family if possible)! I expect to have postcard invitations for the exhibition and opening reception by the end of the week.

Yes, I know the title wasn’t very creative.

While I’m glad they picked this one to showcase, I was quite surprised that my other submissions were not taken, especially my North Korea portfolio – some of which I thought were also visually striking. Perhaps it was too ‘current’. At least this one will make it to the 4th floor of SIPA. Hopefully it will get placed on the corridor outside the main auditorium, where the most traffic is.

The short blurb I came up with:
“Balinyouqi, Inner Mongolia autonomous region, PRC. Mrs. Zheng is a client of the Chifeng Zhaowuda Women’s Sustainable Development Association (赤峰市昭乌达妇女可持续发展协会), a local microfinance institution I visited with Wokai Microfinance. After her husband was laid off from a state-owned construction enterprise, she became the family’s primary breadwinner. She used her first loan to upgrade her pedal-operated sewing machine to an electric one, increasing her productivity, and employ other women in her tailoring business, creating jobs and training others in her trade.”

Unfortunately they didn’t give me a lot of space to tell her whole story, so I had to condense it to the bare essentials like who, what, where, emphasizing how she overcame difficulties with support for investment (or maybe consumption smoothing), and how to help others like her. Hopefully Wokai and its clients will get a little more attention through my efforts.

Congratulations! I’m happy to say that we’ve finished reading through all 1500+ applications, and your name has come out on top. You should all be extremely proud of your accomplishment, as this was the most competitive year in Business Today conference history (our acceptance rate was even lower than that of Princeton itself)!

You come from over 20 countries and 100 colleges; You speak more than 50 languages, you’ve started your own businesses, you’ve won international awards, and you are all around world-class students. It didn’t take me long to realize that I wouldn’t have been accepted to my own conference.

This will be my third time at Business Today, and I’m looking forward to seeing old friends again. I wish that more of my friends from GIS had been accepted, though. Some of them are far more accomplished than I. Unfortunately, I suspect the selectivity of the program rises proportionally with the cost of flying the candidate over, and for me that’s a $2.25 subway ride.

Those of my readers from Singapore or familiar with its customs should be aware of a particular social institution known as, among other similar names, the ‘government scholarship’. However, this term is highly misleading, not only to foreign observers but also many Singaporeans, as the institution has only a passing resemblance to what the rest of the world understands the term ‘scholarship’ to mean. Here I propose a different name.

First note that the first part of its name is accurate. The ‘government scholarship’ is administered by several branches of the state bureaucracy, that is, the various ministries, the subministerial agencies (known as ‘statutory boards’, a peculiar term I have not found elsewhere), and the state-owned enterprises, by which I include the so-called ‘government-linked companies’ i.e. firms partly owned by the state investment vehicle, Temasek Holdings, or its subsidiaries. Some of which were originally subministerial agencies subsequently ‘privatized’, some of which were originally ‘private’, insofar as a large local firm can be said to be private. Which large local firms are private in the sense of being independent from the state I leave as an exercise for the reader. Those thus considered private which may offer a similar ‘scholarship’ only do so to compete with the state’s recruitment practices. My point here is that the social institution is primarily the domain of the state, and it is generally funded directly or indirectly with taxpayer money. There is an entire branch of the state whose sole function is to administer it.

Since the agencies that offer this ‘scholarship’ are numerous and go by many names, and the precise terms and conditions offered by each will vary, I will offer a generic description that should apply to most cases. Typically, prospective candidates apply shortly after the release of the A-level examination results to their organization of choice. Those selected sign a contract to work for the respective agency for a period of four to six years after graduation. The contract stipulates that the agency will cover full undergraduate tuition fees and related expenses at most universities around the world. Some will even cover graduate school.

The actual amount payable depends on which university the agency has decided the prospective candidate will attend. Some are offered coverage at universities abroad (e.g. ‘overseas merit scholarship’) and some at the local public universities (e.g. ‘local study award’). If the terms are acceptable, the contract is signed, and the new hire proceeds to university. For male citizen hires, some state agencies (the ministries) facilitate a deferment of conscription to after graduation, and include the term of military service within the service obligation. For male non-citizens, the contract includes acquiring citizenship and serving the draft first.*

Sound like a good deal? It does to many, and many apply. Thus the selection process must begin with a screening phase, to reduce the number of applications to a manageable level. This screening mechanism is academic merit, that is, A-level results. Those that make the first cut are called for interviews to assess their personal characteristics. Final offers are made to those candidates perceived most suitable for employment, and conversely, accepted by candidates with preferences for a career with that agency, with all its contractual benefits, relative to all other possible careers.

As the primary criteria for being a ‘government scholar’ is not academic merit or personal achievement but career preference, I believe the term ‘scholarship’ is inappropriate. It more closely resembles a practice in recruitment known as the signing bonus, and is better understood as such.

Signing bonuses are typically part of recruitment strategies where firms competing for new hires, but their compensation packages do not differ very much. The signing bonus, a one-time payment, provides an additional incentive for the candidate to choose firm X over firms Y and Z, which could be the make or break factor if everything else is similar. A one-time payment is much easier and less of a risk than raising the offered wages (due to wage stickiness) and benefits, or improving the working conditions, company culture etc.

Similarly, the ‘government scholarship’ is a signing bonus. Since government compensation packages are more heavily weighted on benefits than wages, and the culture and internal practices of a large bureaucracy are usually harder to change, this is the easiest way to incentivize candidates to choose the civil service over all other possible employers in the world. For the scholars pursuing their undergraduate degrees in the US, it’s a ~200,000 USD taxpayer-funded signing bonus paid out over four years before the first day at work. In comparison, the typical signing bonus for entry-level investment bankers was about 10,000 USD during the good years.

Whether such large signing bonuses are a sound use of taxpayer money is beyond the scope of this post, and I leave it as an exercise for the reader. Many others have written extensively on the benefits and harms of this social institution, and I will discuss my perspectives on those at some other time.

Stop calling it a scholarship! Now that I have divined its true name, my hope is that people will start using it, and that when they do they will notice the absence of anything resembling a real scholarship in Singapore, that is, one awarded purely on merit alone, or on financial need – see my previous post on means-testing.

In the interests of full disclosure, I did apply to a few agencies with my peers, and being a slow kid did not even make it to the interview phase. As you can tell, I’m still pretty slow.

Update: Mo-ha-med asks about the up-front military service requirement for male non-citizens. This may seem like a horribly unattractive deal, but it is not intended for foreigners who would otherwise have no obligation to Singapore, but male 2nd generation permanent residents born and raised on the island, who would have the same military service liability as natural born citizens.

Having them serve the draft up front, instead of the usual practice of deferring scholar draft terms to after graduation, is 1) due to the perception that male 2GPRs have a lower ‘loyalty/patriotism/no alternative’ threshold to well, dodging the draft and ‘running off with the money’, than natural born citizens do (I don’t know if this perception is justified), and 2) to assuage popular grouses that non-citizens get all the benefits of residency without paying in as much (this perception being somewhat justified).

Does the up-front service clause dissuade male 2GPRs? Probably not, they would have had to serve it out anyway, and a 200,000 USD signing bonus may well be worth the delayed suffering foregone. Anecdotally, I know several male 2GPRs who signed up.