Faculty of
Architecture
The faculty of Architecture is a very large faculty, filled with people with artistic and creative brains. You may think that because of the large population size, peers will likely be studying together or helping each other work, but it’s quite the opposite. In this faculty, there are almost no exams, and the main focuses are individual projects involving one’s creativity or projects within small groups. This is very understandable, since everyone has their own unique creativity which needs to be applied individually and not shared among others. According to how much time, effort, and workload needed to put up with in this faculty, students barely go out with friends because most of the people in this faculty are individualistic citizens, striving towards making the best out of their own projects, are always in their own bubble, and don’t feel the need of leaning towards peers for comfort or help, therefore, barely spending money on meals with friends because most of the food students eat are at the faculty.
However, even with no exams, the due dates of projects can be very stressful since this faculty revolves around art. It is unique compared to other faculties because students' grades are anchored towards real life creativity rather than graded with a strict syllabus and understanding of textbooks. Because of this, students are not worried about their GPA at all, but are worried about the projects and ideas that make up their ports instead. Since a lot of projects are involved and guidelines from each professor are different, the bond between students from different years (age groups) are tightly knitted and students from older years guide the students from younger years all the time, making the event “rub nong” last for almost a whole year. The most popular sport amongst the students is rugby.
So to conclude, the culture in this faculty between peers in the same year leans towards being more individualistic since a lot of time and effort is needed to be put in their work and presentations, therefore making them have less time to bond with each other. But, the cultural connection between students from different years lean towards being a collectivistic society. This is because the older years have to give advice and guide the younger students to know what is required of them being in this faculty.
Faculty of
Dentistry
A faculty that involves medicine and art is known as faculty of dentistry. This faculty is smaller than the faculty of medicine so people in a friend group will range around 6-8 people. This faculty is also a very stressful faculty because, even with all the workload they have, there are also some art skills and projects involved as well. Since majority of the dental students don’t have prior knowledge about hand skills needed to carve teeth, etc, students from the older years will help aid them with what to do making this somewhat a collectivistic society because the younger years respect the older years because the older years teach them things that will help them graduate in time of 6 years (that’s the majority goal).
However, it is very competitive in their own grade. Because they have to balance out studying, and projects involving hand skills, they barely have time to hangout with each other, therefore they only hangout during lunch breaks and after classes since the faculty is located at Siam Paragon. The amount of money they spend on food per meal is around 200-30 baht no more. GPA is also considered a very important topic in this faculty because it is needed to be used in their portfolio after they graduate and want to attend their masters degree and become dental specialists. Since the grading also depends on their classmates and isn’t standardized, this makes them extremely concerned about their grades.
The learning environment here is overall very stressful and requires extremely good time management to balance out between the materials and contents that are learnt, and also applying artistic skills into patients as well. This faculty also involves dentists to have very good communication skills since they need to communicate with future patients. So overall, this faculty portrays characteristics of an individualistic society, but it also teaches dentists to become collectivist when treating their patients.
Faculty of
Medicine
Known to be the most challenging faculty leaves no other than the faculty of medicine. This faculty involves a lot of studying, losing lots of sleep from all the workload, and importantly, extremely stressful. This faculty is a large sized faculty since it combines both international curriculum and Thai curriculum in 1. The friend group in this faculty is around 10 people. Even though they want to study and share ideas with each other, there is a lot of content to cover in a short amount of time considering how many tests and quizzes they have per week. Usually, they will study alone first and then sit in groups to discuss the materials before doing an exam. However, the environment in the faculty of medicine is mainly individualistic.
As they gradually grow older, they will reach a point where they have to be trained in order to become doctors in real life. Therefore, they each get a special case from different patients. They cannot depend on each other to evaluate what diseases the patient has etc. They have to work on their own. The culture here is also highly competitive since the grades aren’t standardized. It is based on other students as well. According to this, they won’t be 100% with each other in sharing ideas with each other since they also don’t want to fail and are also VERY serious about their GPA and being top of the class.
Apart from the stressful and competitive side, in their freetime, they like to go to cafes to relax or go to cooking class at central in order to relieve their stress. The unique cultural trait in this faculty is they learn so much and it’s super stressful for a consecutive 6 years. They also have to handle situations that require life and death so it’s more serious than other faculties in terms of life applications. So to conclude, their studying plan is a very individualistic culture unlike their freetime plan. In their freetime, they hangout and bond with their friends showing a more of a collectivist side.
BASCii
Faculty of
Innovation
BASCII is a new faculty joining Chulalongkorn University. Students from this faculty are usually students from international schools who are interested in learning about new innovations and technologies that are going to be introduced in the near future. BASCII is an innovation faculty that revolves around start ups, or businesses that are going to help solve real world problems. This faculty has a fair size of students but not as much compared to older faculties making peer groups have around 5-8 people. The interesting thing about the culture of friend groups in this faculty is that each friend group is bonded closely together but rarely interacts with other friend groups. People in their own friend group very oftenly go out with each other to eat, party, and hangout right in the heart of bangkok, whether it would be at Michelin star restaurants, go on private yachts, etc. This shows that the culture of this faculty has a class of its own. The learning environment of this faculty involves having a combination of tests and projects projecting a different kind of stress compared to other faculties. The learning material gets harder as the year progresses. There are many aspects of unique cultural characteristics in this faculty, since it involves different factors from other different faculties.
For BASCII, it is like a combination of Engineering and BBA. Creative ideas need to be put into innovative projects. And everytime, something evolves around creativity, it portrays an individualistic characteristic because creativity of one person varies from another. On the other hand, it also shows collectivist characteristics because students from this faculty tend to study together in their friend group. Aside from everyone having their own thoughts and ideas put into their innovative projects, this faculty promotes and believes that creativity will spark from a good learning environment. Whether it would be, large meeting rooms designed like a business meeting, or the characteristic of each eager teacher wanting students to take the knowledge that they learnt and put it into real life practice and use. In order to promote social thinking and reduce stress towards students, there is a pingpong table and relaxing activities for the students to participate in during their free time.
A unique difference from BASCII and BBA with projects is that, BBA will do Business cases which involves just stating the problems in the business, but BASCII has a business model, this model then solves the problem in the business not just pointing it out. So in conclusion, BASCII holds both a collectivist and individualistic society. The collectivist society happens in their own friend group and are usually prone to spending more money hanging out with each other than any other faculty. However, the individualistic society happens between each of the friend groups since they rarely hang out with other groups other than their own.
Faculty of
Engineering
The Faculty of Engineering revolves around a lot of fun but also serious in terms of work and exams. There are around 10 people in a friend group and the studying they do is based on notes from older engineering students that they use as a guideline. A common goal among engineering students is to collect experience and knowledge needed to start a business of their own. Therefore the learning environment can be very stressful. Even though the materials needed for understanding in this faculty is very hard, the lecturers don’t cover enough topics that are taught making the exams extremely difficult among the students. So in order to fix the problem, they usually spend more time learning and understanding about the materials on their own rather than attending lectures since a lot of thinking and a clear understanding is needed. Because of the stressful environment, they tend to loosen up their stress by having peer comfort in both studying and going out which is a characteristic of a collectivistic environment.
The time duration between the midterm exams and final exams are about 2 months. They typically spend the first 3 weeks having as much fun as possible (eg. going to parties and getting drunk). And after the first 3 weeks, they would often go to study at cafes after class because they can ask each other questions on the materials that they learn. The environment in this faculty is not competitive at all because students help each other to maintain a GPA around 3.25.
The unique culture in this faculty is that students work with a lot of physical things rather than just learning about theories. By doing this, information or tasks they learn can be applied to real life scenarios when they work in the future. This faculty is also very chill since students can wear flip flops to class almost everyday apart from lab days. It's an easy learning environment apart from the workload. Gradually, there will be more project-oriented assignments each year rather than a lot of theories and textbooks compared to the first year. So to conclude, this faculty is overall a collectivistic faculty. This is because peers hangout with each other with non work related activities and also help each other with learning materials as well.
Faculty of
Business
Administration
BBA, known as Bachelor of Business Administration, is a large faculty making peer groups commonly around 10-20 people. Since there are quizzes in almost every single class and the exams are extremely stressful and hard, students usually study in groups to share their knowledge with each other to get through the year. They usually study together at Samyan Mitrtown and other malls making the price of each meal range around 500-600 baht per person. This may seem like a collectivist society to an extent, according to how much peer time is involved. However, it can be a highly competitive individualistic faculty since students here are extremely concerned about their GPA, trying to answer questions first to get their participation scores, and in common cases, being too possessive about sharing the knowledge they have. Because this is a Business administration, students have to do business cases making them have to find internships while learning as well. This is to be more knowledgeable in their field of study and to make sure there are jobs available and waiting for them post graduation.
All of this is achieved through connections. In order to find connections, they strictly go to dinners, cafes, and golf with people whom they believe can bring them their spot of internships, whether it would be with their friends, their friend’s parents, or sometimes they even tour business companies themselves with a minimum of 4 times a month. You see, the unique factor about this faculty is the amount of effort they put in to find connections. They do activities and have to keep up with their studies as well. So in conclusion, students in this faculty have to acquire traits of a collectivist, such as having good verbal and physical communication like, manners, reputation, and flexibility in fitting in with diverse groups of people, so they can achieve their own individualistic goals in the future.
