Accepted to Seoul National University!!
After waiting and waiting, I I just got this in the mail:
Dear Student,
Congratulation on your successful admission to SNU!The acceptance packet will be sent out by post in the beginning or mid of December.
It will be sent out to your international office if you are an exchange student and if a visiting student, it will be sent out to the address you have written in your application.
I hope you are all excited to come to SNU in March and please don’t hesitate to contact me for further inquiries. However, I suggest you to hold your questions until you get your acceptance packet since it will include all necessary information for you.
Best wishes,
XXX
Well, there ya go. Now I just need to get my ticket … I think I’m gonna try to go to Korea mid January to do some sight seeing and what not. I have finally been able to achieve the proposition of the title of this blog and will really be on my way to Korea in the near future.
Even my long-time readers might have no idea just how much I’ve gone through to get to where I am right now. Let’s see … I:
- Served as a full-time volunteer LDS/mormon missionary in Vancouver, Canada for two years and taught Koreans, which cemented my love for Korea.
- Came home and returned to BYU, a LDS university
- Was told I would definitely be going to Korea for an internship with SK once and probably with Samsung another time. You have NO idea how depressed I was after that.
- Decided to leave the Church, forcing me to transfer (also limiting my dating opportunities. Many people get divorced if a spouse leaves the church so I didn’t want to go through that). While non-members are allowed to attend BYU, members who leave the church (by sending a letter of resignation to the headquarters) are kicked out. No questions asked.
- Feel free to watch my explanation in Korean about why I left, or message/email me if you’d like to read my 24 page story in English about my life in the church and my findings in the year leading up to my resignation.
- Endured an extra semester at BYU due to not getting Utah residency in time. If anyone knew what I was going to do, I might have been excommunicated and immediately kicked out and lost all my credits for the semester.
- Dealt with potentially losing all financial aid, left a pretty cushy job, and added about a year to my degree.
- Went through the SNU application process essentially two times, doing an entire application just for being nominated for the exchange program and then a whole different application that would actually be sent to SNU.
Saying I’m extremely happy and relieved right now is a gross understatement.
i might see u hanging around in the SNU campus.
congratulations~!
Congrats!! =) Hope to see you in SNU!! =)
NICE. I’m jealous. I still have 20 months to wait.
If you need any awesome tips I’m willing to offer them. I’m sure Gomushin Girl will too. You seem to have amassed a pretty nice fanbase over the months so I’m sure meeting people will be cake for you.
Don’t drink too much!
@qklilx
Haha, to tell you the truth I still don’t like the taste of alcohol so that probably won’t be a problem =). We’ll see how that goes …
Congrats! And yes, you’ve probably built up a bigger fanbase in Korea before arriving than some bloggers ever get. Cheers on that – now keep the blogging up when you’re knee deep in papers
@Chris in South Korea
That’s the real trick =)
Congrats. I have been following your blog for a while now. Happy to here things are working in your favor.
Thanks ^^ I hope I can see an exciting post when you find your job =) gl
hi there!
gosh. your hard work has finally paid off! it was not an easy application process but u got in!
Take care and hoping for your official updates from Seoul, Korea! take care mate!
Nice…. I’m looking forward to read your blog once you’re in korea. It’s going to be even better. Hope you’ll post some great pics.
btw korean don’t really taste the alcohol they drink!!
Well that’s not to say you will or will not drink. I knew a guy in Korea who doesn’t drink by choice. And I know someone who decided to break the habit and did so successfully. I wasn’t so fond of the taste of alcohol either… it’s acquired. I used to hate beer… now it’s all right every now and then…
It’s easiest to party with Koreans if you drink alcohol, to be honest. But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy your time in other ways. If you do drink make sure you have an idea of what your tolerance is so you don’t create a horrible morning in advance.
Btw I want to warn you again based on previous comments in other posts about taking a class taught in Korean (I don’t know if you were thinking about it but here it is just in case). Make sure you are already familiar with the topic. The 4 people from the first cohort of the Flagship I’m in have been complaining about how hard a time they’re having and wish they had an extra year of prep, and they all know much more Korean than both of us.
Ahhh, I can’t wait… lol
축하해요!! 모르는 게 있으면 언제나 물어봐요 ^^. 전 다음달 20일까지 떠나거든요 ㅠ.
정말 축하합니다~~ ^^ I’m so happy and excited for you!! how long will you be staying there?
@Shanna
I’ll be there a whooooole year ㅋㅋㅋ
Did you apply under exchange or visiting?
I applied under exchange with my university for Spring 2010 too, but I’ve received no news from them at all. Getting all anxious. ):
omggg that’s !!! 부러워요~~ haha is that an exchange program? wow i thought exchanges are usually for one sem. I’m hoping to go next year too
@Sarah
I’m under the exchange program. If you don’t get an email by November 30, then you should definitely email them. That’s the official announcement date, so it could just be that they’re not sending them all out at the same time.
There’s a fellow student in my school from another faculty that’s waiting too. Haha. Which email address did your advisor send the email to? My faculty exchange coordinator is so not helpful when it comes to things like this. She just tells us to wait. T.T
@Sarah
I actually got it from SNU before my advisor, but he sent it on the same day also. I’ve been pretty lucky, my advisor has been really helpful.
My belated congratulations. You are officially better than me.
@The Korean
One of your posts has more info than my entire blog lol. Anyways, thanks for the kind words. Nice to see you here ^^
Wow I totally stumbled on this by accident but I’m glad I did. I’m going to be applying to transfer there in a couple of months (Application is Jan/Feb I mean), but it’s sounding pretty complicated because my Korean is a joke. As an exchange student, are you taking all your classes in English or are you actually taking them in Korean? Either way congrats on acceptance!
@diecinque
I’m going to be taking either all or mostly all of my classes in English at least for my first semester. Thanks! Good luck! I’ll be posting my experiences while I’m at SNU, so maybe you’ll have a better idea about how much Korean is required.