NUS Bulletin AY2026/27

The University Town College Programme (UTCP) is a residential programme offered at Acacia College, College of Alice & Peter Tan, Residential College 4, and Tembusu College. Designed as a more coherent delivery of general education, the UTCP emphasises multidisciplinary learning and active small-group learning. Students from different disciplines, cultures, and nationalities are put together in each class, which helps them to assimilate and synthesise cross-disciplinary knowledge, facilitating multi-perspectival thinking.

Through its multidisciplinary curriculum, the UTCP will help students develop effective communications and strong writing skills, critical thinking skills, and intellectual breadth and rigour to tackle the complex, inter-related challenges confronting the world today. A host of informal learning activities, such as talks by distinguished visitors, as well as social and sporting activities, complements the formal curriculum.

Incoming freshmen may apply for the UTCP concurrently with or after their NUS application. Applicants are required to go through a stringent selection process before being offered admission to the UTCP, on the condition that they have accepted an offer to pursue an undergraduate degree programme in NUS.

Interested applicants should submit an online application via the Joint Residential College Application System when application opens in March every year. Applicants will be further assessed based on their essay submission and interview, on top of their academic achievements and co-curricular experiences.

Applicants may indicate your preferred residential college choices but the eventual placement/offer (if selected) may be different, subject to available vacancies.

Only one application can be submitted per Academic Year.

For Cohort AY2021/2022 onwards:

Incoming Freshmen admitted to the UTCP will be offered a two-year residency in Acacia College, College of Alice & Peter Tan, Residential College 4 or Tembusu College, during which you should complete the UTCP curriculum comprising five courses:

• A Junior Seminar,
• An Ideas & Exposition course,
• Two Senior Seminars, and
• A Data Literacy or Digital Literacy Pillar course, taken according to either your college or faculty/degree programme requirements.

For students from Law, Medicine, Dentistry and selected programmes with curricular constraints (e.g. Nursing, Pharmacy, Music, Architecture, Industrial Design and Joint Degree Programmes), an academic pathway is tailored for you to still read UTCP courses as part of your overall College experience.

For Cohort AY2021/2022 onwards:

With effect from AY2021/2022, students from faculties in the course system are required to complete six General Education (GE) courses under the enhanced GE curriculum (https://www.nus.edu.sg/registrar/academic-information-policies/undergraduate-students/general-education/for-students-admitted-from-AY2021-22).

UTCP students who read the four UTCP courses (a Junior Seminar, an Ideas & Exposition course and two Senior Seminars) will fulfil the requirements of the following four GE pillars:

• Cultures and Connections
• Critique and Expression
• Singapore Studies
• Communities and Engagement

The Data Literacy and Digital Literacy pillars will not be offered by the RCs (except for Acacia College which will offer Digital Literacy courses) and UTCP students will need read these pillars with their faculties to complete the GE requirements.

For UTCP students from NUS College of Humanities and Sciences (CHS) who read the four UTCP courses (a Junior Seminar, an Ideas & Exposition course and two Senior Seminars), you will be exempted from the following four CHS Common Curriculum Courses marked with ‘X' in the table below. UTCP CHS students will be required to read the CHS Common Curriculum Courses indicated in yellow.

For more details on the fulfillment of your degree programme graduation requirements, you are advised to check with your respective programme offices.

Students who are unable to complete the UTCP may seek for exemption from certain GE pillars based on the UTCP courses read to date, subject to approval from the respective GE Pillar Chiefs.

In some instances, Ideas & Exposition courses may be read in lieu of other writing / communication courses offered by the Centre for English Language Communication, which are graduation requirements for selected Faculties. Notwithstanding, each I&E course may only count towards either Faculty requirements or University Level Requirements but not double-counted towards both.

*x represents a letter suffix which denotes the topic of the Ideas & Exposition course

For UTCP CDE students from Residential College 4 (RC4), IE2141 is precluded from RC4 Junior Seminars (UTC1702x). Effective from the AY2019/20 cohort onwards, CDE students who have read a RC4 Junior Seminar (UTC1702x) will be exempted from the IE2141 graduation requirement. You will be required to take an additional 4 Units of UEC in place of IE2141 to meet the minimum number of Units required for graduation.

Students whose programmes do not have University Level Requirements (namely Law, Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Nursing, and students on Joint Degree Programmes with overseas universities) should check with their respective programme administrators on how or whether the UTCP courses may be classified for graduation.

For more information, please visit http://www.nus.edu.sg/osa/campus-living/residential-options/residential-colleges.

For more information on the Colleges offering the UTCP, visit https://acacia.nus.edu.sg/, http://capt.nus.edu.sg/, http://rc4.nus.edu.sg/, and http://tembusu.nus.edu.sg/