To our Dean’s List and award recipients: Live a full life!

Dean’s List and award recipients were all smiles as they took photos with their peers to commemorate the event.

Grades are not necessarily a guarantee of success in life. This sentiment might seem out-of-place on the occasion of the Dean’s List & Awards Ceremony, but it was one that the NUS Faculty of Law Dean, Professor Andrew Simester, highlighted in his address at the event held at Bukit Timah Campus on 26 September 2024.

A celebration of the students who did well in the Academic Year 2023/2024, the Dean’s List & Awards Ceremony saw close to 100 students being placed on the Dean’s List, with another 26 awards given out. With smiles and high-fives aplenty, the atmosphere was cheerful as the students and their families took photos to commemorate the event.

Families and loved ones came to witness the celebration of the students’ achievements. 

After a warm welcome by Associate Professor Tan Zhong Xing ’12, Director of the Sheridan Fellowship Programme, who acknowledged the proud and happy parents and loved ones in attendance, Professor Simester addressed the audience.

Associate Professor Tan Zhong Xing took to the podium to welcome the winners, their loved ones and the award donors to the occasion.

Dean Andrew Simester commended the students for their strong academic performance, while pointing out the importance of exploring non-academic interests as well.

First, he thanked the donors who had established the prizes, pointing out that their support for academic excellence at NUS Law has helped us to incentivise and reward NUS Law students. Even as he commended the students on their strong academic performance in his congratulatory speech, he gave this advice: Live a full life.

“We are acutely aware that it is an increasingly competitive environment for our law graduates. You’ve all done very well in grades and that puts you in a strong position. But perhaps this is a good time to remind you … that grades are not necessarily a guarantee of success in life. The critical analytical skills you learn in a law degree are of course essential to success in a career. So too are your abilities to communicate, to work with and mobilise a team, especially your ability to cope with setbacks, both professional and personal.”

Exhorting the students to recognise that there was more to life, he encouraged them to do things other than study: play sport, play music, write a play. He added, “Employers want more than men and women who are academically good; they want rounded individuals.”

The donors were delighted to be able to catch up with another, the NUS Law faculty and the student winners after the presentation ceremony. 

Likely holding that perspective were the 21 donors or their representatives in the audience, which included legal firms, the prospective employers of NUS Law undergraduates.

Besides being invited onstage to present their prizes to the students, they were also pleased to have the opportunity to meet and mingle with the prize winners after the ceremony, and also to catch up with one another, former teachers, as well as other faculty members in the NUS Law community.

Beaming with pride were the loved ones in attendance, with some students even winning multiple awards.

Among the winners was Dean’s Lister Isabella Rotschaedl ’27, the Chairperson of the Freshmen Orientation Central Committee 2024/2025. She said, “I am extremely privileged and grateful to have had the unwavering support of my family and friends throughout the past year, who have always celebrated the highs and weathered the lows with me.”

“The first year of law school was quite an adjustment, and I found great meaning in the friendships and community forged both within and beyond law school. The sense of solidarity I felt as my friends and I went through the same struggles grounded me, and encouraged me every day. It was that, coupled with the rigorous and enriching NUS Law curriculum, that contributed greatly to my achievement.”

Doubtlessly, her feelings are a good summation of her peers’ sentiments, judging by the friendships on display as students hugged one another at the conclusion of the event.

Congratulations to all Dean’s Listers and award recipients!