Study Abroad (Korea University): Application Timeline

Hello, hello all! It's been a while, but as I've mentioned in my previous post, I will be blogging about my semester abroad at Korea University these next few months. As I'm still on winter break right now (and have been for the last two months), I've decided to walk you all through my application and pre-departure process.

Which Program Should I Choose?

At my university, there are various programs divided by major, cultural immersion, and etc for studying abroad. The two that were open to me -- a business student -- were the School of Arts and Letters and the School of Business' study abroad programs. I decided to study abroad through the business school's program due to the ability to transfer business electives from abroad back to my home institution. Another factor was the absence of a language requirement for the business school's program. The School of Arts and Letters, on the other hand, houses all of the cultural and language classes within my school, so one year of Korean language study was needed. I'd only taken a semester's worth of Korean, so I definitely would not have been able to study abroad this semester if I had gone with their program. Their program is nice, however, if you want a more language intensive/centric program. It's all up to what you want out of your program. I want to study abroad but I also want to graduate on time, so the business school's program is personally a better fit for me. 

Application Timeline

Home Institution Nomination Deadline (Oct 30)

Every university does this a little bit differently, so I can't tell you what this part of the process may look like for you; I can only talk about my university's nomination process. The way it works is that my school can only nominate as much students for a study abroad institution as the study abroad institution sends to my school. Therefore for popular schools such as ESADE in Spain or any school in Paris for that matter, competition is pretty rough as my school can only send around 4-5 kids. This is due to the fact that ESADE and schools in Paris have the capabilities to send over only 4-5 of their students every semester. As my school and these schools have an agreement with each other, it's important to send around the same number of students as the partner school. Fortunately for me, Korea isn't really that popular of a destination for kids at my school, haha, so getting my business school's nomination wasn't that hard.

                   

In order to receive a nomination, I had to submit an online application comprising of four essays and other information. In addition, I also had to do an in-person interview with my business school's study abroad adviser. The application, one's GPA, and the interview then gets scored by the reviewers, and each student is ranked from the highest to the lowest score. Those at the top of the list receives their first choice study abroad school, while those below typically got their second or third or fourth or so on pick (we had to rank the 31 study abroad schools/locations in order of most desired to least desired). This is why for those looking to study abroad in Spain and Paris, the essays and the interview are crucial in raising one's rank. Like I said before, however, Korea's not that competitive   LOL (3 people applied to Seoul National University and 3 applied to Korea University), so we all got nominated.

Korea University Application Deadline (Nov 30 -- Korea Time)

***NOTE: Make sure you take into account that every single deadline at this point is KOREA time. This means that if you're in the USA, the application is due Nov 29.***

After you've been successfully nominated by your home university, Korea University's Exchange Program Manager will contact you about applying to Korea University itself. You'll have about a month -- all of November -- to complete the application and gather any additional documents they ask for. In order to apply to KU, you'll need the following items: 

• Online application form
• One (1) photograph 
• One (1) signed pledge statement 
• Official academic transcript
• One (1) letter of academic recommendation (needs to be a professor or academic adviser)
• Statement of Purpose and Goals (1-2 pages)
• Copy of passport ID page
• Confirmation of international health insurance while abroad
• Certificate of Health: dates showing 1 chicken pox shot + 2 shots of MMR (or the shots of                                            these individually) + you need to get a TB skin test

Everything needs to be written and completed in ENGLISH. 

The nice thing about KU's application process is that everything is done online. My friends who applied to study abroad programs at Seoul National University and Yonsei University had to complete both an online application AND send in a physical copy of everything listed above. I find that super 麻烦 (troublesome); not to mention, rush delivery is expensive. I think my friend paid about $20-$30 to deliver her physical application. 

KU Acceptance Letter (Early Dec)

I received a PDF copy of my Letter of Admission around early December, while the physical copy arrived at my business school's study abroad office around early January. Aside from the admission letter, the admission packet also includes documents and forms needed for a Korean visa! 

That pretty much sums up the application process for Korea University Business School :) I'll talk about applying for visas and housing in my next post! 

[5.30.15] EXO'luXion in Shanghai - Day 1

Hello friends! I'm not even sure if anyone still looks at this blog anymore, but I was going through some of my old posts and noticed that I had left this one as a draft. It's not much but I might as well post it. Unfortunately, my phone broke last May so I don't have any of my past photos or videos.

I'll also add some of my thoughts about my summer and talk about some of the things that had happened in Shanghai. I'm also very excited to say that I'll be studying abroad at Korea University this spring semester. To my dismay, I noticed that there aren't a lot of resources for those studying abroad at Korea University -- being mostly blogs about Yonsei -- so hopefully I'll be able to shed light on things such as admission, course registration, business classes at KU, and etc!

Anyways, here is a brief excerpt of my first day in Shanghai during the summer of 2015 :) I was fortunate to attend EXO's and Big Bang's concerts in Shanghai, as well as EXO's concert in LA last Valentine's Day.
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Where do I even begin? Today was the day I had been waiting for for weeks! It was also my first full day in China this summer, so I was determined to make the most of it. Waking up, Alice (apartment mate) and I were the only ones in the apartment. Our other two apartment mates -- Shane and Joey -- hadn't arrived yet. Since we were hungry, we got dressed and went down to Yang's Dumplings nearby. If you guys didn't know, Yang's Dumplings is a chain of cheap dumpling stores (seriously, it's so cheap). You can get four dumplings there for 5 元 = less than $1 and a big bowl of spicy noodles for only 9 元 ~ $1.50. Even though the food is cheap, it doesn't mean that it is bad; actually, it is very delicious ^___^ and there was so much that I couldn't even eat it all. One thing about this place is that there are no vegetarian dumplings. Even though there is a 素 dumpling on the menu, it's deceiving because there are actually little chunks of meat in it, and you can't ask to buy it without the meat. So vegetarians, beware.

After eating at Mr. Yangs (as Shane calls it), we walked around the area and got some 珍珠奶茶 (boba/bubble tea). We also walked into some hair salons and asked them for pricing, because I wanted to perm my hair. When we went to Century Mart (similar to Walmart), we met up with Joey and bought some groceries for our house. Century Mart is kind of like Costco when it comes to free samples, except CM gives so much more! See the picture of the coffee and noodles down there? That's the sample size!!

Came back to the house and saw that Shane had arrived. I could only stay for 30 minutes because I had to meet up with someone to pick up my EXO ticket, as I had sent it to their house when I bought it. Navigating the metro wasn't too bad since I had already done it earlier when I first arrived.

After getting my ticket, I made my way back to the metro and arrived at the Mercedes-Benz Arena at around 2 pm. Mind you, the concert started at 7:30 pm. Why was I there so early? Well, in Asia, concerts operate a little bit differently. In the States, concerts are very individualistic -- you show up one hour beforehand, watch the concert, and then leave. For K-pop concerts in Asia? Fansites come and set up tents outside the arena area. There they sell fan merchandise and give out free goodies, such as banners, posters, fans, stickers, bags, and even candies! I arrived early to specifically get some free light sticks from a fan group on Weibo. If you guys were on Weibo days and even weeks before the concert, there had been many mentions of this hashtag (well....this was where it ended haha).......

I ended up not even getting the lightstick because I think they ran out before I got to the venue; however, I did receive a lot of free goodies such as fan banners, stickers, and fans. Thank you Chinese fansites! Bless this one girl who gave me a banner of Luhan and Sehun even though I had no internet and couldn't like their fan group on Wechat. And bless these two girls I met at the venue. Even though they couldn't speak any English, they were super patient with my Chinese and stayed with me until the concert started. If you haven't tried going to a concert by yourself, DO IT. I highly recommend it.

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My summer in Shanghai was such an eye-opener. At 18, being able to live in a different country by myself was an experience that I wouldn't have traded for anything. My friends and I obviously did a lot of clubbing, but we also got to explore Shanghai and develop connections with the locals. Here is a list of some of the most memorable things that had happened to me during the summer of 2015:

• Made friends with the waiters at Perrys -- they gave us free popcorn chicken AND a banana split! And they invited us to their friend's birthday party and taught us how to play this super popular Chinese dice game. My friend, Alice, got super addicted to it. 

• Almost got my wallet stolen by these two ladies at Qipu Lu. I was waiting in line to buy something to eat, but when I looked down to get my wallet, my bag was open and it was gone. Alice told me the two ladies walking away were acting king of funny, so I ran up to them and asked them in Chinese where my wallet was. They told me they didn't know so I stuck my hand into their purse and.....MY WALLET. I was so pissed lmao. I shouted at this "THIS IS MINE" in Chinese and they had the audacity to tell me that "at least they gave it back to me". Are you kidding me? Alice had to hold me back because people were staring at the four of us as I was shouting my head off. (Be careful of your personal belongings guys. I was pretty ignorant before this incident because I didn't think it would happen to me. But of course, it did...and I was pretty lucky to have gotten my wallet back because a lot of people usually don't. Keep your eyes wide open -- not only in China, but anywhere you travel to). 

• Visited Fudan University with my friend Sayantan. We walked around the school and visited 大学路 later for some Korean friend chicken at Kyochon! 大学路 is a street lined with cute cafes and eateries by Fudan University.

• Haley (she was on the 2013 NSLI-Y Hangzhou trip with me!) was studying in Beijing with PIB (Princeton in Beijing) and took a train down to Shanghai for the weekend. While she was here, we decided to visit Hangzhou for a day. The train ride to and from Hangzhou was...interesting. On the train ride to Hangzhou, the train didn't have any seats left...so we had to buy standing tickets. It was only a 2-3 hour ride, so we were like fine, how bad could standing be. Well, it was really bad LOL. Chinese trains literally have no personal space. A mother was nice enough to let me and Haley sit on our 3 year old kid's tricycle for 2 hours or so. Not the most comfortable, but at least a place to sit. On the train ride back to Shanghai, we had seats...but again, Chinese people like to overbook their trains, so there was literally 4 people sitting on a seat meant for two. I felt bad for these girls sitting on the floor (lmao even the floor had no space because there were also people standing/sitting in these areas. It was chaos), so I invited them to share my seat with me. When they were sitting down near to me, we and the grandmas and grandpas sitting across from us started talking and chatting with each other. We talked about where I was from, the differences between America and China, beauty standards, etc. It was crazy to think that I was having a full-on conversation with these people in Chinese (they were from the countryside, so they knew very little English). I hardly knew these people, yet in that 2-3 hours, we all felt like one big family :') 

• Got to see Nancy, Sander and Vikki again, as well as meet Andy! Andy and Vikki were on the NSLI-Y 2015 Hangzhou program, while Sander was Matthew's host brother and Nancy was Haley's host sister. We ate at 外婆家, and being in Hangzhou again, I of course ordered our table 东坡肉.

• The NBA officials came to visit my workplace, as they were solidifying a deal to implement a place to house the games in Shanghai. When they came, we had to give them a tour of the arena. The thing was that the time that they had visited was also the same time Big Bang was in Shanghai for their world tour. Needless to say, when we showed the NBA officials the dressing rooms, the Korean staff members for Big Bang stared at me like a hawk lmao -- thinking I was a fangirl here to stalk Big Bang since I look like I'm 14 apparently -_- 

• Alice got left behind by the subway, and the old uncles on the subway train with me laughed at her. 

• Alice and I met three Australians around Dapuqiao mall. They were looking for this KTV place that a guy had told them to meet him at. We finally found the place after 30 mins of walking, and it was sketchy AF. It was a KTV with hosts, so the guy had around 8 girls in his KTV room. He told all of us to stay, but Alice and I wanted to get the heck out. We politely told him no, and I think he got mad at us...so we made a run for it. The Australians didn't want to stay either if we didn't stay so they left with us, and as we were walking back to the main mall, we met a guy who had a pet monkey. One of the Australians was trying to get the monkey's attention, in which he was successful, but the monkey bit his hand. We were all scared he was going to get rabies or something so he went into a local store and bought 白酒 to pour over his hand. Well....alcohol is supposed to disinfect cuts...but this is drinking alcohol he was using LOL. What a weird night and encounter. 

• My internship gave me two tickets to see an ice show, so I took Alice with me. When we were there, Alice got to see all of her favorite figure skaters, and we even got a glimpse of Yao Ming. Here was watching the show from the VIP section with his daughter and wife! 

• Alice and I ordered delivery during a typhoon, and the guy who delivered the meal to us was soaking wet :/ Didn't think it would actually work, since it was pouring outside...but it did. We felt so bad that we gave him a huge tip, but he refused T__T 

• Got to see Jolin Tsai perform! This was the first that I've heard of her, but apparently she's super famous in China and Taiwan. Her concert was sold out and, since it was a center stage, the capacity of her show was one of the highest in the arena's history. 

• The marketing department at my internship held a networking event, and I was in charge of taking Polaroid pictures of the guests LOL. The event was super fun and the food...omg, was to die for. Endless amounts of macarons and mango lassi. Yum! Plus sashimi, oysters, dim sum, wine and cheese, champagne, ugh. 

    

       

• The subway closed down for the night while Alice and I were trying to get home one day. We ended up having to walk two stations to our apartment (about an hour walk) at 10 pm at night. 
• My apartment-mate, Shane, got us and Joey into M1NT -- a fancy night club with a shark tank! Yes, a shark tank! Lost my pictures of us at M1NT, but here's us at Muse on the Bund!

There were other things that had happened, but I don't think they're appropriate to post on here haha, so this will have to do for now.

Until next time,
Christine