Student Report
Yonsei University, South Korea
Fall 2014-08-31
Practical Information:
Before leaving Norway:
I started to gather information for different exchange universities using destination
finder in good time before the application deadline. Yonsei was one of the universities
that I could go to in South Korea. All the information I found was from Yonsei´s own
websites. It is though somewhat confusion to navigate between the different Yonsei
websites, because they are all under their own sub domain.
The information about their Business College and information about the application
process was on two different sites. But in the end, I got the information that I wanted.
Other then that, the information about Yonsei University was good.
Applying for Visa:
To travel to Korea and study you have to apply for what’s called a D-2 Visa. All the
information you need about the visa application process will be given to you if you
contact the Korean embassy in Oslo by e-mail. You will not find the information you
need by just looking in up on their websites.
At the time the cost for a visa was 360NOK, plus postage for sending and returning if
you don’t have the opportunity meet at the embassy in person.
Travel information:
I chose to fly from Bergen to Amsterdam, and then from Amsterdam directly to Seoul
where the university is located. From Incheon, which is the main international airport
in Seoul, you can take a buss almost directly to the university campus and the
international dorm where you most likely are going to stay.
Housing:
Housing was provided on campus. All the information about how to apply and
payment can by found on Yonsei’s office of international affairs website.
It is as always important to seek out information so that you know when the housing
application window opens. You will have to apple just when they open up for
applications for housing. Rooms may be taken if you are not one of the first applying,
because it is at a first come first served basis. If you can´t or don’t want to live at the
dorms, you may find outside housing. But it is recommended that you go to Korea to
sort this out. I do not know if the university will you assist you in this.
Costs:
You usually don’t have to buy most of the books, but it all depends on the course you
are taking at Yonsei. The rent for my room could have been cheaper if I opted to live
in a double room, but I chose to live in a single room.
Also, food expenses all depend on where you choose to eat, as you can get meals that
are really cheap to meals that are pricier.
Housing is paid before you visit, so the table under is what I paid upfront divided by
the 4 months I was staying there.
So the monthly expenses I had would be approximately this:
Rent
Books (one time expense)
Food
Transport
Other
4000NOK
700NOK
4000NOK
140NOK
2500NOK
Culture and language:
There might be some language barriers that can occur when you are speaking with
some of the local students that attend Yonsei University, most of the ones that takes
English taught classes are usually proficient in English though. But all of the
professors that are teaching the classes all speak good English and they are easy to
understand.
But you might find it difficult if at some restaurants. The staff usually doesn’t speak
good English, and in some circumstances the menu will have no English translation or
pictures to help guide you. So hopefully, a person in your group might know a bit of
Korean to help you out. It is usually not a problem if you are going with a diverse
group of people
There are many ways of experiencing the Korean culture. Various university clubs,
like Yonsei global, provide some opportunities for you to do so. Most of this will be
promoted on the orientation day, so do not miss the orientation day!
About the School
Yonsei University has 3 campuses around Korea, but the main campus that you will
be attending is the Sinchon campus. Sinchon is situated in Seoul, the capital of South
Korea. The area is known for being a University student area because there are 3
universities that are located here, Yonsei University, EWHA Women University and
Sogang University. A subway stop from Sinchon is the very popular Hongdae area.
This area is quite popular among students, artistic people and some foreigners.
The Yonsei Campus is quite large, the university has around 40.000 students, and it
may take you around 20 min to walk from one end to the other. Getting from the
dorms and the classrooms at the business building will take you about 10 minutes of
walking.
Couse registration
The course registration opened up in early august. It’s important to know the time
difference because courses will fill up fast as soon as the registration is opened. I was
able to pre-register for the business courses so at least for the business courses, I did
not have to worry. You will get information about pre-registration a couple of days
before the main registration. But they would like you to respond with a list of the
business courses you wish to attend, with a one-day deadline, so please check you
emails often during this time so you don’t miss out on the opportunity. Business
courses are really in high demand and will only have 5 spots open during the main
course registration. 2 hours before the main registration they will open up their course
registration portal so that you can make a wish list. Then you will have to click on
each course on the wish list when they open up for the registration. If you are not fast
enough a course will fill up in seconds. So please keep an eye on the time carefully
and exactly to the second if you wish to get into a course.
If you are unlucky and don’t get to register for the courses you wish for you still have
an extra chance. You will have to contact the one who is lecturing the course and get
them to fill out a form. You would have to do this at the first lecture of the semester.
It would be wise to contact them on email on beforehand in case they have any
information they want from you. The experience I got from the first lectures is that
there are a lot of people in the same situation and most people will get rejected. So it
is really a last resort that most likely will not work. The lecturers have both classroom
size constraint and a maximum amount of student they wish to have in the classroom.
The add/drop period ends around the first week, but you can drop courses until the
end of September.
Academic Calendar:
Arrival Date
First day of Semester
Last day of Classes
Mid-term Examination Period
Final Examination Period
25.august
1.september
19.december
20-24.october
15-19.december
There are some other holidays that will give you come days off like Chuseok, national
day, and other special events. But these will be announced, and also holidays like
Chuseok doesn’t always fall on the same days every year.
Arrival:
Traveling from the airport to the dorms may be a bit confusing if you have not done
your research before going. The most affordable alternative is to take a limousine bus
from the airport right to the dorms. You will have to take the 6011 bus from the
airport and get off at the EWHA back-gate bus stop. This stop is closer to the dorms
than the Yonsei bus stop, which is further away.
I arrived a day before the first introduction day, as that was the day you could check
in at the dormitory. I settled in in my dormitory and went out to find new friends. It is
quite important to be socially active the first few days, but it is quite easy since most
people are in the same situation as you.
So on the first introduction, the school handed out our student ID(which you can use
as a public transportation card) and also a welcome package. The welcome package
includes a lot of information about the school and such.
After a lunch break, the school arranged for the Yonsei Global student club to present
all their activities and sub-groups that exchange students can attend. There are quite a
few activities that you can attend to experience Korean culture and make friends, both
local students and exchange students, which Yonsei Global offers.
The rest of the first week goes into drinking and making new friends. But also other
administrative things, like applying for an Alien Registration card and paying for the
dormitory if you haven’t paid the whole amount before arriving.
But all the information about these things will be given to you when you arrive at the
dorm and at the introduction presentation.
The International Office:
The international office at Yonsei sent the information needed by email before and
also during the semester if there were anything particular that they wanted us to know.
But I never contacted the office, as I didn’t have any questions or needed assistance,
so I don’t know how it is to interact with the office if you run into problems.
Promoting BI and Norway:
There were no promotion events arranged, so I didn’t get any opportunity to promote
BI or Norway, other then answering questions from fellow students that were curious
about the country and school.
Social Activities:
You will get to know a lot of different people from around the world when going on
exchange. Most of the people that you will get to know will be people who live in the
same dorms as you do. Since most of the exchange students will be in the same
situation as you, it is quite easy to get new friends.
I usually go out for dinner in the evening with the same group of people.
There were also a mentors group, which you can sign up for. It is organized in groups
with mainly exchange students and some mentors/buddies that are local Korean
students. The point of the mentor group is to either go for dinner or other social
activities once every month. The size of the mentor group is about 30 and more, but
you will also be assigned a smaller buddy group with about 10 others. The smaller
buddy group main purpose is to do activities that are not suitable for the bigger
mentor group.
My group was quite good at meeting up once every month, but I heard that some of
the other groups rarely met up. Regardless, the mentor group is a great way to get to
know and socialize with other exchange students and also in some way the local
students to.
Academics
In the classroom
The teaching style at Yonsei is lectures with heavy use of PowerPoint. It is something
that I had do adapt to as they will rarely deviate from the slides, meaning they will
rarely draw up models or examples on a blackboard. They do want the class to ask
questions or participate, and this is actually something that you get evaluated on when
they grade you.
The lecturers are somewhat informal, so when you speak out in class you usually
doesn’t have to use honorifics. At least this is true for the courses taught in English.
The level is similar to that of BI and the workload is about the same. Only thing to be
aware about that most business courses will have you do group reports and
presentation, which is very different compared most of the courses at BI.
Course materials
What kind of material that is used in class does differ from course to course. The main
material used is PowerPoint slides, there will be a textbook that sometimes they say is
not mandatory to acquire and read.
In some classes they do also link to online articles and cases that they expect you to
read before class.
Most of the materials like textbooks and online articles are from English speaking
authors.
Exams
All the exams conducted are based on mostly things that the lecturer has gone through
during regular class. They will most likely do an exam review before the exams, were
they will talk about what kind of topics they will test us on.
Most of your grades will be based on the following:
-Class attendance and participation
All classes will grade you on class attendance and participation. How much the final
grade is based on this are typically from 10% to 20%.
-Group assignment and presentation
Most of the business classes I took had group assignments that usually are either
report writing or presentation. In some cases you will have to do both those things.
This will account for about 20-35% of your grade.
-Mid-term and Final exam
Both the mid-term and final exam contributes to your final grade with about 30-40%
each. Midterms are given around mid-October while the finals are mostly done at the
final week of school. The lengths of both exams are typically from 1 to 2 hours.
In some special cases, there is no final exam but instead a final paper that has to be
written and handed in. Information about how they will grade you will be gone
through during the first week of school, it is also written in each course’s syllabus that
will be handed out and also posted online.
Library and technology
The building of the business college is somewhat un-modern. Classrooms are not
what you would expect coming from BI, but it was not so bad that it was bothering
me. Some classrooms might be quite hot during the beginning of semester if the air
conditioning is not working at its full potential. So be aware that some classrooms
will be hot during at least the first month of class.
The main library is quite impressive, and they do not exaggerate when they say it
might be the best library in Korea. The main library alone is bigger then the building
that houses BI Bergen. You can find 24-hour study room and you can also book group
rooms if you are in need of that during the semester.
The business library regretfully is not located at the main library, but at the Business
building. Its closer, but it suffers from not being quite as modern as the main library
is.
The school has Wi-Fi coverage around the whole campus, which is quite convenient.
But there will places were the Wi-Fi strength will be quite poor and you can’t access
the network.
It is worth to note that Yonsei’s portal service, where you will find the course
registration service and YSCEC(similar to it’s learning) are all optimized for Internet
Explorer. This is true for most web services in Korea in general, so if you do not have
a PC with IE, you might run into some trouble. I was able to use my Mac and the
Safari browser for most of my needs, but for course registration and course evaluation
I had to use windows. You should not risk running into problems, especially during
course registration. These are problems that you have to expect when coming to
Korea.
Description of Courses
BIZ3147 Strategic Management, Professor Kim Ji-hyun
Bachelor, alternative to Strategi
Prerequisites: expected to have taken an elementary course in economics.
Grade is based on:
Class attendance and participation
2 Group presentations
Pop quizzes
Midterm exam
Final exam
A theoretic view on how strategic choices may give you a competitive advantage over
other competitors in a market. You will get to learn some abstract theories about the
subject but also more traditional views on a company’s search of creating a greater
gap between it and its competitors.
BIZ3162 Money and Banking, Professor David Dong Un
Bachelor, alternative to Finansiell styring
Prerequisites: Undergraduate introductory courses such as Corporate finance,
Economics.
Grade is based on:
Class attendance and participation
Mid-term exam
Group assignment and presentation instead of final exam
An unorthodox approach to the subject that will teach you how the financial system
works and how it brought down the whole world market in the financial crisis of
2008. The professor uses un-traditional methods to teach to the different concepts and
practices. You will also get to know more about the world financial system, but
notably you will learn most about The US and Korea.
BIZ3189 Management Information Systems, Professor Kim Seung Hyun
Bachelor, elective
Prerequisites: none
Grade is based on:
Class attendance and participation
Group case report and a presentation
2 hour-long midterm exam
2 hour-long Final-exam
In this course, you will be introduced to how IT and other technologies have shaped
and are still shaping modern businesses today. You will learn how IT-solutions may
help companies capture more value on one hand, but also how bad-implemented
solution may bankrupt businesses.
IEE3108 Modern Korean History, Son CheolBae
Bachelor, elective
Prerequisites: None
Grade is based on:
Class attendance and participation
10 Written summaries
7-10 page written comparative paper about Korea and another country.
This course mainly focuses on Korean history after 1875?? The topics you learn are
more about the historical culture problems then it is about learning your specific dates
of historic events. You will get to know how the Korean society has grown from
being colonized by the Japanese and to topics like the strengthening of the national
self-esteem, women’s role and immigration. By attending this course you will get to
learn more about modern Korean society, but it may not be the course for everyone.
IEE3341 Korean 1:
Bachelor, elective
Prerequisites: None
Grade is bases on:
Class attendance and participation
Weekly vocabulary tests
1 hour Midterm exam
1 hour Final exam
Korean language class offered for incoming exchange students. The course is quite
simplistic and the main goal is to teach you very basic Korean. You do learn how to
read and some simple sentences but it is not recommended if you are really looking to
learn Korean more then on a very low level. This class was a great chance to get to
know the Korean language casually while you are on exchange.
Final Note:
Going on exchange is a great opportunity that everybody who is considering the
option of going should go. I will not hesitate to go out on exchange in the future if I
get the opportunity. You will get to know and meet people from around the world,
and also get a glimpse of how student life is outside of Norway. It was truly a
semester filled with great memories that I will cherish for a long time.