IP is a gd choice. ur scientific knowledge will be very handy

i suggest u find out whether foreign firms r allowed to advise on IP issues here. The pay is much better afterall. I say this on the assumption that you love money and are very ambitious and don't care about work-life balance (or the lack thereof)

it is hard to say whether smu grads will get a higher/lower starting pay than their nus colleagues (1st batch is only graduating this summer), but i suspect that the answer is 'no'. there shld not be any disparity

SMU JD allows you to accelerate. time is money. pretty sure NUS doesn't allow you to do so. caveat: don't accelerate unless u know that you can manage the workload. your ultimate aim should to get at least a 2nd upper.

More imptly however, you must compare the breadth of electives on offer at both schools. NUS wins this round hands down.

Note that u only get to do 4 electives at SMU. If u r set on IP, i think i can guess which electives you'll be doing On the other hand, u get to do 32 credits worth of electives at NUS. That's a maximum of 8 modules. Now compare the IP electives between the 2 schools. It shld be evident that NUS offers a wider range of IP electives. This leads me to another point for u to consider.

Are you 100% sure that u want to be an IP lawyer? Suppose u go to SMU and take all the IP electives they have, but decide in the course of ur study that IP law is boring as hell. Should you decide to go into some other area of law, u might struggle in the beginning due to a lack of knowledge since u were only able to do 4 electives