The NUS Overseas Colleges (NOC) Programme is an internship programme with strong emphasis on technology entrepreneurship. Students will spend either 3, 6 or 12 months at technology hubs around the world, working as a full time intern while studying part-time in a prestigious university in the region.

We interviewed Gokul who went to NOC New York in 2019 to learn more about his NOC experience.

Can you give me a brief description of your NOC journey?

I went to New York City for a year where I worked as a Solution Consultant at a fast-growing tech start-up called Workato. Concurrently, I attended classes at New York University (NYU) and took modules under NOC-NUS. A considerable part of my NOC journey was also taking part in hackathons, product management related courses and tech-talks. Apart from all these things, I also had so much fun making new friends and exploring the US.

What made you decide to go on NOC?

I have always had an interest in entrepreneurship. I loved learning about how businesses start and the struggles they faced on their journey to be successful. As cheesy as it sounds, I always wanted to create my own start-up and find ways to provide something of value to others. 

While talking to an ISE senior, he introduced the NOC program to me. I found that it was the perfect programme for me as I can be around like-minded individuals who were “entrepreneurial”. It also gave students like me the chance to work and learn from the start-ups that we were interning at.

Being an ISE student, we are always curious about how we can apply our problem-solving skills in various sectors. That curiosity cultivated in ISE translated into motivation to put myself out there and apply my ISE knowledge overseas to help start-ups grow.
How is the work culture different from Singapore? 

Not to give a politically right answer but every company (whether it be MNCs or start-ups) and its location will have a different work culture. So it is definitely difficult to compare.
But I found 2 aspects really interesting in the company that I worked for:

  1. I was never treated like an intern. I was tasked to handle clients alone and ensure project success. Having the autonomy to make these decisions was daunting at first but being challenged every day made working there fulfilling.
  2. Everyone is objectively vocal. Opinions and ideas are shared freely and objections are made constantly. I was encouraged and expected to make my views heard, which was definitely different. In Singapore, most internships involve you doing tasks assigned by your manager, whereas, in the US, they want you to grow and think more critically.
 What was your greatest challenge during NOC?
TIME MANAGEMENT.

I can’t stress this enough. Many people think that spending one year overseas is all fun but unfortunately you have a lot of things to do and focus on. I got burned out the first month I was there, trying to do everything and anything. Personally, I felt that it was arduous to focus on the 5 pillars that I am going to mention. After weighing my options and looking at what I wanted out of my NOC experience, I decided to prioritise on 3 of these pillars.

  1. Full-time internship
  2. School Work (partnering university modules & graded NOC modules) 
  3. Travelling (exploring things to do around the country or city)
  4. Networking + Events (Hackathons, Tech Events and others)
  5. Personal Venture (working on your own start-up & pitching to NOC professors)