School Preparations

In order to study abroad, I had to apply to study abroad through my home university with my top 5 choices for foreign universities. University of Hawaii at Manoa has two programs for international study abroad, Study Abroad Center and Manoa International Exchange. There is also the Natonal Student Exchange if you want to experience a semester in the continental U.S! I ended up choosing Manoa International Exchange or MIX because they had much more variety of countries and universities to choose from! The application is due about 2 semester before you study abroad to help you prepare!

Manoa International Exchange provides a pre-departure checklist to complete to help with all the various paperworks, approvals, and steps needed before you leave!

SNU provides some steps to prepare for pre-departure and arrival for South Korea. 

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Pre-departure: The manager of the Inbound Student Exchange Program will continuously send you emails for updates and due dates for the upcoming semester. These emails provide your acceptance into SNU, timelines when things are due, what types of documents you need and more. Be sure to check your email constantly so you don't miss out on anything! Here is a link that is offered as a pre-departure checklist for SNU! 

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Arrival: They offer a date to sign up for a bank account at one of the banks on campus. I suggest to go at one of these dates as it makes it easier to sign up. They also schedule a date to apply for your Alien Registration Card so make sure to do that once it is announced because it takes a few months to get your ARC! This is important to use certain applications, food deliveries and more!

Course registration for both universities is important to ensure we have back up plans and also plan for our return to keep us on track to graduation!

SNU: SNU's course registration was a bit crazy! Registration opened about a couple weeks before school started, so for entering "freshman" exchange students, it was one of the first days of registration and classes fill up FAST! Make sure to check beforehand with your advisors of different departments what classes would qualify for your required courses. If you are a business major, look even beyond the offered "Business"  classes since there were classes that was offered in other departments that qualified for business equivalents! If you are looking to learn Korean, I recommend the Language Education Institute (LEI), where they offer various different types of accelerated programs that can accommodate your schedules!

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UHM: Make sure to be checking when your scheduled registration date and time is and adjust it to the time in South Korea! Also to make sure you do not have any holds on your account that could possibly delay or restrict registration.