I took 4 courses at Seoul National University (SNU), 3 business courses and 1 Korea related course. The courses I took were Digital Marketing, Operational Management, Special Topics in Management, and Korean Language and Culture. All the courses were taught in English and in-person.
My favorite course out of all of them is the Korean Language and Culture course. I find that it may also make sense since the professor is from America and it was more suitable to my learning style. The professor is not very repetitive and makes information simple and straight to the point. I found it very easy to understand content in that class. There were quizzes at the end of class every few weeks and sometimes the content in those quizzes would be including things taught within the same day. Luckily, he also lets you know when those quizzes will be and so you can make sure to pay attention carefully on those days. The quizzes were always 5-6 questions and short answer. Attendance is also taken. There was also a presentation in the middle of the semester where you and your group can talk about anything, but it just had to relate to Korea in some way. My group did the presentation on Korea’s beauty standards and the stigma with it. There was no midterm or final exam, just a final paper where there was flexibility in too, any topic having to do with Korea. You also need to post 3 “cultural activities” in the discussion board, no due dates, just before the semester ends. The “cultural activities” was quite lenient, it could just be anything having to do with Korea as well. You can cancel out the need to do the “cultural activities” posts if you attend the field trips. So since I went to the one field trip to Gyeongbokgung Palace, I only had to post 2 “cultural activity” posts. Overall, I enjoyed this class the most and was able to learn more about Korea and Korean culture that I have never known before. I found it interesting to build off of the Korean courses I took in UH and just to expand on the topic much more. I also met really nice people from different places. This class was the most diverse I had ever seen. If the course is still available when you register for SNU, I definitely recommend it!
The 3 business courses were taught by English-speaking Korean professors, and they all seemed to have the similarity of giving a lot of information. This made it incredibly difficult to figure out what exactly you should be focusing on, especially for exam instances. In addition, they did not give study guides. I found it particularly overwhelming and more on the tricky side to understand.
Digital Marketing in particular would always use examples of real life businesses, and we would have to take the lesson from those examples, but you don’t have to remember the businesses. I honestly felt the lectures were pretty scattered and since we were focusing business to business examples, it was hard to grasp each aspect because of the order in which everything was taught. However, the profesor did provide a lot of great examples and information worth remembering, but I think organizing it by lesson instead of business could help students to organize their thoughts better too. There was around 3 homeworks, 2 presentations on cases, midterm, and final exam. Attendance is also taken.
Operational Management was quite fast pace and there is a worksheet you complete in every class with people you sit by as a group (just for notes/study, not needed to turn in). What made this course particularly difficult was that you were not able to access the slides until after class. There comes a time when math starts to be involved until the end of the semester. She is going to want you to solve these problems during class, however, she goes through the slides pretty quick that most of the time you can’t write down the formula and steps in time, so a lot of the time is spent waiting and guessing with your group until she goes over the answer (unless someone had actually memorized/knew those formulas before taking that course). She also goes over the answer fast, so if math is not your strength (like me), you may want to avoid this course. I feel that this course may be more suitable if you are very comfortable with math and/or find it easy. However, especially in the beginning of the course (before the math came in), and occasionally throughout the semester where we got to learn about operations and managing them, I found it very interesting and helpful to understand since it could be applied to many situations. I enjoyed when the course was talking about ways to be efficient in not only big production companies but in ways we could apply it to ourselves and our smaller processes or even business. It really emphasized the importance of every detail and not wasting time. This class gave me the most homework out of all the courses. There is also a midterm and final exam. Attendance is also taken but you get 3 free “no questions asked” excused absences.
Special Topics in Management was a course I only had once a week but lasted 3 hours. The professor turned out to be South Korea’s former trade prime minister which was a nice surprise. Every single class is him lecturing, except for final presentation day. He goes over current events pretty often and throws in a few lessons here and there to relate to it. The midterm is a report paper and the final is a group presentation on a negotiation case. Participation is also a good part of the grade so he always makes sure to try get students to speak, give their own opinions or answer his questions. I enjoyed this class as well and he always provided insight which I found very credible because of his former position. He also brought in guest speakers from different countries occasionally which allowed us to view other important insights within business. Attendance is also taken.
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