Singapore Management University (SMU) is internationally recognised for its world-class research and distinguished teaching. Established in 2000, SMU’s mission is to generate leading-edge research with global impact and produce broad-based, creative and entrepreneurial leaders for the knowledge-based economy.
SMU’s city campus is a state-of-the-art facility located in the heart of downtown Singapore, fostering strategic linkages with business, government and the wider community.
– SMU is ranked 38th globally for Business & Management Studies in Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) World University Rankings by Subject
– #12 among specialist universities worldwide
– 12,666 undergrad and postgrad students
– 388 globally diverse faculty
Academic: GPA of 3 or above on their studies to date
English Language:
– IELTS: 7
– TOEFL iBT: 93
– Duolingo English Test: 125
19 August – 8 December 2024
Applicants 2023
Regular Applicants: 136 students
GPA: 3.01 – 4.00
TOEFL iBT Score: 99 – 112
IELTS Score: 6 – 8
Duolingo English Test Score: 90 – 150
Awardees 2023
Regular Awardees: 5 students
GPA: 3.45 – 3.98
TOEFL iBT Score: –
IELTS Score: 7.5 – 8
Duolingo English Test Score: 145
Available Courses
International Business is the study of the cross-border trade, investments and corporate functions by firms, and the role of national governments and international institutions in regulating these activities. The course examines the objectives and strategies by multinationals in internationalization and the strategic choices in country locations, market entry, product/service offerings, organisational structure & human resource management. Related topics include the international business environment (economic, cultural, political, legal), globalisation, foreign direct investments, licensing, franchising, foreign entry modes, strategic alliances, and regional economic integration. The course will demonstrate the challenges for business and management in an international environment.
Design Thinking is a human-centric, interdisciplinary approach towards innovation that aims to help companies and startups, change and innovate. This course introduces Design Thinking(similar to the IDEO approach)and its application to developing new “things” (i.e. products, services, experiences and business models).
The course is divided into four main aspects, all interconnected but separately emphasized: (1) design methodologies (e.g. ethnographic research, brainstorming, prototyping), (2) the “thing” to be designed (3) attitudes and behaviors and (4) design contexts. Design contexts refer to the broader emerging context for designs and business, specifically, society (including different cultures and the poor), and the physical environment. Learning will be primarily experiential in nature –through class discussion, group exercises, and a team project. Guest speakers with practical experience in Design Thinking may be invited as well.
This course aims to expose students to the use and usefulness of computing technology in the realm of finance. From the collation of data, analysis of data in order to tease out relevant information, to the presentation and visualization of information, computing technology plays an important role that is increasingly essential as one faces the need to assimilate an astronomical amount of information in today’s world. The course is structured in such a way as to employ topics in finance to motivate the discourse on computing technology. Equipped with the computing skills, in turn, students are motivated to handle more challenging problems in finance.
“This course introduces students to the essentials of effective IR and covers the various methods that publicly-listed companies can employ to successfully communicate with the global investment community, including institutional investors, retail investors, analysts, financial media, financial bloggers and regulators.
Computational Thinking equips students with skills to tackle complex computational problems; it trains students to design solutions to solve those problems using a computer program. It draws upon concepts from mathematics and computer science – more precisely, combinatorics, data structures and algorithm design.
This course will hone students’ analytical skills as they are challenged to think abstractly and computationally. Their minds will be open to the wonders of computing, as they go behind the scenes to unravel the fundamental analytics that empower Twitter, consulting agencies and service companies.
This course introduces cost and management accounting topics to enable students to understand how accounting information is used to manage an organization.
The course focuses on the factors that differentiate one company from another. For example, “What makes one company more profitable and/or better managed than another?” The course will look at various functional areas within the firm, ranging from manufacturing to marketing, and from accounting to human relations. In addition, the concept of management, how senior managers plan, implement and control those plans through people will be briefly discussed.
The course will enhance students’ personal skills in preparation for more advanced courses at the university in the following ways: working in teams, analyzing cases, writing reports, and making presentations.
This course provides students with a basic understanding of accounting as “the language of business.” It introduces students to the basic concepts, principles, procedures, and approaches underlying the accounting process. In addition, coverage of the accounting cycle will show how business transactions impact financial statements, and ultimately the analysis of financial information for decision‐making.
Attaining to happiness and avoiding suffering are amongst the most fundamental and universal human
Today, the arts and culture saturate almost every aspect of our everyday lives, providing a powerful lens through which we come to understand ourselves, others and the spaces around us.
This course seeks to provide a reflexive understanding to the role, significance and impact of the arts and culture in our everyday lives, with a focus on the contexts and conditions of cultural production, and their wider symbolic and socio-cultural meanings. Students will be provided with critical skills to meaningfully analyse cultural texts, practices and spaces in relation to contemporary phenomena, cultural theory and their own everyday experiences.
This core module will develop key competencies and aptitude for analytical reasoning about sustainability across different industries and different stakeholders (government, corporates, civil society, NGOs). With a problem based, systems approach to sustainability, students will be trained to identify, research, assess, and effectively communicate major sustainability trends, effects and real world tradeoffs. Students will cultivate an understanding of how social dimensions interact with complex sustainability challenges and learn how to apply this understanding towards effective sustainability communication in corporate, non- profit/NGO and government settings.
The dynamic and fast changing nature of our world today is best described by VUCA, a term coined by the US Army War College. VUCA stands for Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous. The Arab Spring saw a change of government in countries like Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen. Once powerful countries in Europe are now fighting bankruptcy. The growth of the developing world which was taken for granted has begun to slow down. Even companies that were synonymous with their product categories just a few years ago are now no longer in existence. Kodak, the inventor of the digital camera had to wind up its operations, Borders, once the second largest US bookstore, has shut down due to their inability to evolve their business models with the changing times.
With such momentous changes happening in the world today, this course prepares the students to better understand the complexity and difficulties in reacting to the ambiguity inherent in those changes. This course helps students to understand the tensions in a given situation and how they need to think through a problem from multiple dimensions.
The course aims to give students an insight into the megatrends and forces that are impacting their world. We ask what are some of the causes of these trends and their business implications? What can future managers like themselves do about understanding these changing trends, and why they need to address, appreciate, adapt and attempt to manage these changes in their ecosystem? The course aims to introduce some basic VUCA concepts, in order to broaden their world view of management and nature of managing complex problems. The first half of the course introduces some of these trends, while the second half provides tools and possible frameworks to deal with the VUCA aspects that they will face in the future.
This course focuses on applying fundamental economic concepts to analyze the interaction and integration among the people, corporations, and governments in today’s globalized world. Topics covered in this course include theories of international trade, tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade, trade wars and cooperation, emerging economies in Asia, balance of payments, and exchange rate movement. The role of multilateral organizations such as the WTO, the IMF, and regional trade arrangements will also be discussed. The syllabus is carefully tailored to cope with the need from students with little or no prior exposure to economics. Unlike many courses offered by the School of Economics, the use of mathematics in this course will be minimal. A large share of class time will be devoted to discussions about real-life events, with particular emphasis on the contemporary world.
This course provides an introduction to the development economics in Asian countries. The goals of this courses are i) to understand key questions and findings in poverty research and ii) to discuss intended and unintended consequences of proposed policies. In particular, we investigate whether and to what extent nutrition, health, education, credit, and insurance explain the poverty trap. We pay close attention to behaviors of the poor and the incentives created by institutions and policies to get a deeper understanding of the challenges of poverty. We discuss issues of current interest to policy makers based on the analytic tools we develop throughout the course.
This course is an introduction to democracy, the most common type of government in the world today. It is oriented around core questions and debates in the study of democracy. How do we define democracy? Why do some countries become democratic, and others remain authoritarian? Is democracy under threat in the world today? As we answer these questions, we will examine how factors such as political institutions, social cleavages, and economic inequality influence the democratic process. We will examine evidence from a broad range of countries in the developed and developing world. Course readings will be supplemented with case studies and material drawn from current events.
This course examines crucial works of art from the 19th century to the contemporary. It provides students with a roadmap to reflect on them in an open-minded, analytical and critical way. It considers historical, economic and socio-political contexts, and focuses on the integration of art within the broader cultural environment. This course offers new perspectives into the shifting kaleidoscope of art, and by its conclusion, students will develop a profound understanding of artworks that might have previously seemed inaccessible.
“Technology (specifically AI) has evolved beyond a technical proposition to a shaping force of our future, interwoven into social, cultural and political elements of human society.
Sustainability reporting is the practice of disclosing an organization’s economic, environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance and impacts. This course presents a review and analysis of the theoretical foundations of sustainability accounting and its reporting issues in practice. The course will focus on existing and emerging frameworks for developing corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance metrics, assessing their reliability, reporting to stakeholders, and incentivizing managers based on ESG metrics. Specifically, the course will focus on the user perspective of sustainability reporting so that individuals and organizations can make informed decisions, drive positive social and environmental change, and contribute to a more sustainable and responsible global economy.
This core module focuses on providing students with fundamental proficiency of concepts and key frameworks of sustainability and how they apply to the multifaceted issues linking climate change, environment and society. The course will introduce students to key frameworks such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the UN Sustainable Development Agenda 2030, the Paris Agreement and relevant developments concerning net zero principles in the public and private sector. Beyond this overview, the course will focus on specifically on 6 SDGs and their interlinkages reflecting the sustainability research and pedagogy emphases at SOSS. Namely, these are Climate Action, No Poverty, Good Health & Wellbeing, Reduced Inequalities, Zero Hunger and SDG Partnershps.
Furthermore, the course will use case studies and key examples from whole-of-nation sustainability policies such as the SG Green Plan 2030 and energy transitions in Asia, which directly reflect the adoption of these frameworks. As part of the instruction on key climate-literacy concepts such as mitigation, adaptation and resilience, the course will emphasize topics reflecting the social dimensions of environmental sustainability related to access to water, food, energy, social vulnerabilities and disaster risk. Practical knowledge of social enterprises and triple bottom line approaches will be covered through key readings and examples discussed in class.
In this course, we introduce students to the economic way of thinking about societal issues. We use the themes of incentives and empiricism to illustrate the power of simple economic ideas, and their ability to explain, predict, and improve what happens in the world. The course will examine how market activities are shaped by both the private and public sector. It will allow students to appreciate how free markets and government policies affect society, creating winners and losers, and to understand the societal trade-offs implicated in an economy. The course will also examine debates on the importance of social institutions in contributing to economic growth, and on economic policies surrounding the world financial crisis. Two topics related to Growth in Asia will be covered in the course.