The value of a liberal arts education

The Class of 2017 Alumni Survey, which was conducted in 2021, has shown that many Yale-NUS College graduates are enrolled in top graduate studies programmes or engaged in exciting careers in industries spanning from consulting to science and education to date. Some graduates have even taken on more unconventional professional pathways, such as design research in the United States or arts programming at a Japanese museum.

The Class of 2017 Alumni Survey, revealed that many Yale-NUS graduates feel that their liberal arts education has uniquely helped them to explore and excel in industries which are unrelated to their previous course of study. In the survey, nine out of ten respondents (94%) said that they were satisfied with their undergraduate education at Yale-NUS.

Chia Pei Yun (Class of 2017) graduated from Yale-NUS with a degree in Literature and a minor in Physical Sciences. During her time at Yale-NUS, Pei Yun was one of the co-founders of the Yale-NUS Chamber Choir and part of the Tolkien Fanclub which organised a biennial Tolkien Marathon. Today, she is pursuing a Doctor of Medicine (MD) at Duke-NUS Medical School.

Pei Yun at her white coat ceremony at Duke-NUS. Image courtesy of Duke-NUS Medical School.

Pei Yun explained that she had always been interested in both the sciences and humanities, and at Yale-NUS, she had the opportunity to develop her passion in both. She started learning Greek and Latin, and later, wrote her capstone project on a passage of Ovid’s calendrical poem, the Fasti.

After graduating, Pei Yun pursued a career in the finance industry. She elaborated, “After Yale-NUS, I went into corporate finance editing for an independent credit research firm. Essentially, I made sure that our analysts’ reports were clear, accurate, and convincing. It was a great experience since, unsurprisingly, I started with little understanding of how capital markets worked. Still, I did feel like I wanted something more from my career and was considering finally making the leap into medicine.”

“While taking some time off from my job, I stumbled into a part-time position teaching Latin at Tanglin Trust School (thanks, COVID-19 work-pass restrictions!). During that time, I prepared for and took the Medical Colleges Admission Test (MCAT) and worked on my application to Duke-NUS. Thanks to the support and encouragement from friends and Nilanjana Pal Director at the Centre for International & Professional Experience Yale-NUS, I was eventually accepted to the MD Class of 2026!”

On her experience with Duke-NUS, Pei Yun said, “I’ve been surprised to find how much the liberal arts experience harmonises with the Duke-NUS approach – and arguably the whole premise of medicine as a career – in that the key is to build a good foundation of knowledge and understanding is to relentlessly pursue knowledge for the passion of it. And underlying all this is a fundamental interest in and empathy for people, which again resonates with the humanities at large and the Yale-NUS ethos.”

“Medical school is challenging, no doubt, and I won’t be done with learning even by the end of my four years here. There is still so much more growing to be done, and it’s far from the end of my story. Still, that is kind of the challenge I was looking for and which Yale-NUS has prepared me well for.”

In the survey, two thirds of the Class of 2017 indicated that they are based in Singapore, with one third based abroad. One third (36%) of the cohort had also finished or are currently pursuing graduate studies. These graduates explained that their education at Yale-NUS College has enabled them to do well in graduate school and navigate challenging careers.

Maggie Schumann Willingham (Class of 2017) majored in Anthropology at Yale-NUS, though she also took several statistics and computer science courses. After completing a Master of Science in Data Science and Analytics at Georgia State University, Maggie now works as a Senior Analyst (Global Data) at Habitat for Humanity International.

Maggie explained that she furthered her passion for service at Yale-NUS. She said, “In College, I worked as a research assistant for Professor Anju Paul on migration issues, and she later supervised my capstone project on migrant domestic workers’ access to a weekly day off in Singapore. I was also interested in quantitative methods then, so I used mixed-methods analysis that looked at prospective domestic workers’ online profiles and how they described rest day preferences in my capstone. After graduation, Professor Paul and I refined my research, which we eventually published in an academic journal.”

After Yale-NUS, Maggie moved back to the US, where she worked in legal support roles championing the legal rights of the underprivileged.

On her journey, Maggie said, “Although I enjoyed my work with domestic workers in Singapore, I felt pulled to work on migration issues in my own country and to explore legal work to more directly help others. In my final summer at Yale-NUS I served as a long-term volunteer, pseudo-intern for a non-profit legal services organization that supported mothers held in the US’ largest family detention centre in rural Texas. After graduation, I got a job with one of its partner organisations, the Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC), as a coordinator for remote volunteers. While at the SPLC, my work gravitated towards managing our client database, which sparked my interest in pursuing graduate studies in data science. My background in Anthropology, with its focus on perspective and context, always reminds me to pay attention to the humans behind the data.”

Maggie shared a piece of advice for students navigating their academic and professional journey. ”I have always found that there are so many opportunities if you bring creativity and care to what you are doing. Yale-NUS brings together an incredible group of people who all bring creativity and care to their various pursuits, so don’t forget to step outside your own path and get to know your community.”

[Note: This article was updated on 5 December 2022.]