Preparing for Korea: Getting Logistics Out of the Way

Well, hello there! I hope you’re in the right place because this is where I’ll be blogging about my exchange experience at Seoul National University. My name is Kenny Choi and I’m a Pre-junior Computer Engineering major. My decision to come to Korea stems from interest in Korean culture. The food is amazing, the music is fun, and the people are interesting; that was while I was back in the States, so I was driven to explore everything at the source of it all.

Before I landed at Incheon Airport, there were a lot of things to prepare for, such as course registration and housing. If registering for courses at Drexel was difficult, registering for courses at SNU was on a whole other level; I took priority registration for granted. The time tickets were the same across the board, where the only division was between student ID numbers ending odd and even. As soon as the registration was open, the classes were already filled up halfway! By the end of registration, I only had two classes on my roster. Fortunately, exchange students were allowed to override into courses that either were full or weren’t open for regular students to take; there were multiple places on campus that offered the form to do so, including the Office of International Affairs, which provided most of the help for incoming exchange students, and the College of Engineering. And thus, class registration was done.

Applying for housing also proved to be interesting as well. I learned my lesson after registering for classes. I had the option of living on campus in dormitories or living off campus. Living on campus was the cheapest option, coming at about $750 for the entire semester at the newest building; for the older buildings, it came out to be about $400. Although there were a lot of good things going for the dorms, that doesn’t come without competition. As soon as my time ticket opened up, I filled it out as quickly as possible. However, applying for the dorms wasn’t just first come, first serve. The process was also a lottery. Luckily, I did get into the newer building, which was one of the most coveted buildings to live in.

So there we have it! With all the logistics out of the way, there’s nothing left but to talk about the experiences in Korea. I gotta say that there’s so many things to do here and so many things to see. Here’s a preview on some of the sights you can take in while you’re here.