Student review [#31119] for Computer Science
at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology - KAIST

Studying at KAIST is very hard and challenging, especially if you want to maintain a high GPA. Yet, I believe KAIST is the best place if you want to learn a lot, get ready for an adult life, but still have some fun during university years.

Curriculums are overloaded, I believe it would be more efficient if they were a little easier, because no one in the class can understand everything taught in the lectures. Due to too many materials to cover in the lectures, professors are required to go very fast through the presentations. In addition to not having the best English of professors (most of their English is enough to comfortably teach and talk, yet not perfect), understanding lectures become unachievable.

So studying at KAIST is definitely self-study most of the time. You would need to spend hours in the library to understand the materials. But I think that’s normal for all universities. You are learning to study on your own, you are learning to work hard, you are gaining a lot of knowledge. I hope no one expects a middle school staff again, at least those who got admitted to KAIST.

Considering hard studying here, some students find student life dissatisfying here. But I liked it quite a lot. University campus is wonderful – big territory, beautiful nature, innovative buildings, sport facilities and more. Dormitories are not the best, but not that bad. International community here is small and the majority of the students (like 90%), but that makes it quite friendly. You know everyone from your batch and hopefully find your soulmates.

There are a lot of student events on campus, unfortunately, most of them are held in Korean (as most of the students are Koreans who don’t really want to communicate in English). Yet, there are organizations and student clubs for international people, with a lot of events too. And one big plus about student life here at KAIST – there is a scholarship of around 270$ for every international student. That’s around the minimum amount to survive, but still a very good amount (relatively to most universities worldwide).

Speaking of Korea in general, I really liked this country. Very conscious population, order everywhere, security and developed technologies. Language is a big barrier for those who don’t want to learn Korean, and culture (food, traditions) may not be liked by everyone. But the country itself is very developed.
That also provides some good career opportunities. For me, as a software engineer, there were a lot of technology companies looking for a specialist of my type and conditions are quite good most of the time.

Summarizing all, KAIST is a place where you can get stressed very easily, but if you learn how to handle it well, you would get so many benefits of studying here.