Mr Alex Ng graduated from SMU last year, and the course he read – information systems – is among those whose graduates saw the biggest starting pay jumps. Last year's IT cohort took home a median gross salary of $4,000 each month, $400 more than their seniors, according to a joint Graduate Employment Survey whose results were released yesterday.
Mr Ng scored a grade point average of more than 3.8 out of 4, and was awarded summa cum laude, or the highest distinction. He had job offers from GovTech and a bank a few months before finishing school in May last year. "I chose GovTech because I wanted to be exposed to different kinds of technologies besides banking," he said. He had also done a four-month internship at the agency in 2015, when he worked on a business grant portal for small and medium-sized enterprises.
"Initially, I didn't know anything about job prospects. But I started seeing the change in my four years at SMU. In recent years, everyone is moving towards digitisation."