“My stomach was in knots for a couple of months, thinking about taking out loans to pay for my next semester’s tuition.”  

Tong Gageun (24, China), a student majoring in Korean Language Education at SNU, says that studying abroad in Korea continues to entail what feels like a great burden -- paying tuition fees and living expenses.

“As it was completely my choice to study abroad in Korea, I’ve been striving to pay for my tuition on my own by doing part-time jobs, such as teaching Chinese. However, it’s not adding up to enough to cover my tuition, which is why I’m starting to get really burned out.”

However, now Gageun is greatly relieved, since SNU implemented a student-specific scholarship for foreign undergraduate students. All he had to do was submit his parents’ income statement along with his reasons for applying for the scholarship, and all was solved.

“I really didn’t expect it, since my GPA was quite lower than most of the Korean students. Now, I’m truly grateful for the scholarship, as it reduces the worries of having to pay for my tuition. It’s a big relief to know that now I’ll be able to concentrate more on my studies.”

Scholarships for international students were very limited, offering only up to 10% of tuition costs instead of the maximum of 37% offered to Korean students. This was because it was hard for the school to evaluate international students’ financial statuses, due to the lack of databases and standards.

Moreover, international students were also limited in doing part-time jobs off-campus, with fluent Korean usually always being a requirement. Therefore, the SNU scholarship program for international students has been implemented so that it may assist students in paying both tuition and their living expenses according to the student’s current financial status. Especially, on-campus cafeterias and ‘Work-Study Programs’ (programs that engage foreign students to work during SNU’s international events) are offering part-time jobs to international students with financial support from the school.

Hankani (20, Brazil), another international student at SNU, works at events at which Portuguese is needed, such as the ‘Central and South America Visiting Program’ which took place earlier this year.

“Since most of the jobs are on-campus, it’s not only convenient work, but the wages also really help me pay my living expenses. I really appreciate the opportunities the school is offering to foreign students like me”, remarks Hankani.

Out of the total number of foreign undergraduate students at SNU, 326, 36 were chosen for the scholarship based on: income (50%), financial status (20%), GNI (15%), and number of dependent family members (15%). A total of $62,000 was offered to the chosen 36 students in June, the specific amount awarded to each differing according to each student’s current status.

“Although we started with a fund of five hundred thousand dollars, we are aiming to establish a consistently larger fund and eventually increase the number of scholarships for international students”, says Jeong-jae Lee, Dean of the Office of Student Affairs.

For more inquiries on the student-specific scholarship, contact at Division of Welfare, Office of Student Affairs. Tel. 02-880-5078, Email lks8807@snu.ac.kr
 
July 22, 2008
Translated by Teayeon Kim, SNU English Editor
SNU PR Office