About Academics

About… Academics:

Course registration

SKKU course registration has caused much confusion and stress among all international exchange students. The course registration period starts in August. In comparison to my home University in Hawaii, you have to be much quicker about course registration, if not the courses you want will certainly be full. When I say quick, I mean that you should have your courses registered within the first week of registration period. I was very lucky with my courses, but other exchange students came to Korea without being registered for any courses at all. Even though SKKU makes an exception for international students and lets them enter courses that are already full—as long as the professor gives his ok—it is still super stressful to take care of course registration when you’re here! Even then, SKKU allows students to ask the professors for an exception. So I recommend registering as early as possible.

The courses:

SKKU offers two different types of classes for foreigners that are taught in English:

1. IEC International exchange courses that are only open to exchange students and are offered every semester
2. Regular courses that are taught in English and open to all students

I thought that the IEC would be really nice to take so I registered for two of them, but after the first week of school I realized that it was a mistake!

In fact, the IEC courses are taught by teachers who are pretty unenthusiastic and speak English not as fluently as I would have expected, but the teachers I have in my regular courses are brilliant!

Not only do the regular courses allow you to meet Korean students, the course quality and professionalism of the professors is on a completely different level. If you are looking for some easy classes, IEC courses may be what you want, especially since the regular courses can be pretty challenging. One of my teachers from a regular course requires us to read about 200 pages each week. This sounds a lot, but if you’ve got the right study-techniques it’s manageable and the class is seriously soo much fun! So overall, I definitely recommend not to sign up for too man IEC courses but rather to chose the regular courses that will be taught in English.