Applying to Study Korean - My Experience
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Congratulations on the offer, your experience was an interesting read and I look forward to seeing how learning Korean goes for you. What level are you with the language atm?
Original post by nyxnko_
congratulations 
Thank-you!
Original post by Black Rose
Congratulations on the offer, your experience was an interesting read and I look forward to seeing how learning Korean goes for you. What level are you with the language atm?
Since there's no official Korean GCSE or A-Level qualifications as a second language (as far as I'm aware) it's kind of hard to quantify, but I've been self-teaching intermittently for just under a year. I'm still beginner/intermediate level and I haven't been able to study as much as I'd like because I've been focusing on my actual school stuff, but I've done enough to know that I enjoy it (and enjoy it more than my school subjects haha). I wish I could spend more time on it but real A-Levels are my priority atm!
Original post by eggyeol
Congrats OP! Good luck for the future 
Thank-you, you too!
Original post by umbrellala
Since there's no official Korean GCSE or A-Level qualifications as a second language (as far as I'm aware) it's kind of hard to quantify, but I've been self-teaching intermittently for just under a year. I'm still beginner/intermediate level and I haven't been able to study as much as I'd like because I've been focusing on my actual school stuff, but I've done enough to know that I enjoy it (and enjoy it more than my school subjects haha). I wish I could spend more time on it but real A-Levels are my priority atm!
I understand, A-levels are hard work! Good luck!
When I found this post I couldn’t believe someone else was in the same position as me. I’m currently taking 3 sciences as A levels and up until the end of year 12 I was dead set on doing medicine at university. It wasn’t until I flunked my internal exams and did horrible in my Maths external when I realised that maybe if I wasn’t ur out for medicine. And for medicine it was a minimum of AAA and honestly I was worried over my general motivation to do medicine, whether I wanted to do it because it was something I wanted to do or my parents wanted me to do. I’ve been an avid follower of Kpop and korean News since about 2014 and regularly keep up to date on most of the news there. It was the beginning of this year that I decided to take up learning korean as a hobby and I realised how much I actually loved it. I’m taking a gap year so I could take time to focus on my exams rather than my application process and I’m hoping to as well go to SOAS in 2019. I’m worried though that me taking 3 sciences would put me at a disadvantage.
Original post by Miztx12
When I found this post I couldn’t believe someone else was in the same position as me. I’m currently taking 3 sciences as A levels and up until the end of year 12 I was dead set on doing medicine at university. It wasn’t until I flunked my internal exams and did horrible in my Maths external when I realised that maybe if I wasn’t ur out for medicine. And for medicine it was a minimum of AAA and honestly I was worried over my general motivation to do medicine, whether I wanted to do it because it was something I wanted to do or my parents wanted me to do. I’ve been an avid follower of Kpop and korean News since about 2014 and regularly keep up to date on most of the news there. It was the beginning of this year that I decided to take up learning korean as a hobby and I realised how much I actually loved it. I’m taking a gap year so I could take time to focus on my exams rather than my application process and I’m hoping to as well go to SOAS in 2019. I’m worried though that me taking 3 sciences would put me at a disadvantage.
I'm glad you've found something you're excited about! Choosing a subject like this can be pretty lonely when you've been expected to do something else for so long :/ I wouldn't say that doing 3 sciences would put you at a disadvantage, honestly I don't think they look at the subjects themselves that much but just look at the grades you have. Even if they do look at the subjects, sciences are usually pretty impressive regardless of what you're applying to - they can tell you're intelligent and able to deal with the intensity of the course. As long as you have a language at GCSE and can show you're passionate about it then you should be fine.
Good luck with A-Levels and your gap year, I hope I'll see you at SOAS next year!
Original post by 999tigger
Really good post/ thread umbrellala. I have bookmarked the thread and will refer other people to it. Queries on applying for Korean courses I tend to see every 6-8 weeks. Glad all your choices came in for you. The biggest difference I'd have seen is London or not. GL.
Thank-you! The London or not debate is definitely difficult, I'm not sure whether the reputation of the SOAS course and more academic environment is quite worth the cost as of yet, but I guess I'll see after the applicant days.
Common Misconceptions about the Course
1. It’s purely language
This is a misconception about any language degree in general, but a lot of people assume that because you’re doing a Korean degree, all of your modules will be language-learning modules. This is absolutely not the case. Honestly, it would be pretty boring if that’s all that was in the degree and definitely wouldn’t give you the right skills and understanding to be able to use the language properly. In fact, for the first and third year (second year being spent abroad) only half of your modules are language based and in the fourth year, a quarter are language modules*. So really, it’s more sensible to look at it as half a language degree and half an East Asian Studies degree. Non-language modules can cover a range of topics such as history, politics, art, cinema, sociology, and literature.
*using the credits system and the SOAS course structure
2. It’s purely about Korea
To be fair, this is a very understandable mistake to make, and I find myself having to explain this quite often. As I said in misconception #1, half of the course is essentially made up of East Asian Studies modules, meaning you don’t just learn about Korea, but also learn about the East Asian region as a whole. This includes South Korea, North Korea, China, and Japan as the main focus countries.
3. It’s too narrow
This is another understandable misconception, considering the title is ‘Korean’, but to be fair to the universities, it would be very difficult to properly represent what this course is about without having a title about three paragraphs long. As I’ve said in #1 and #2, you cover a range of topics focusing on countries from all over East Asia, but you also have a huge selection of modules to choose from for your ‘open option(s)'. This is where you can pick a certain number of credits from any department in the university, allowing you to add to the breadth of your course as you wish. This means you could pick up Buddhism in Pre-Modern China to supplement your Buddhist Arts in Korea module, or choose to do the Modern History of Japan module to broaden your course.
The extent of the freedom you get in picking free options and the range of topics you can choose from definitely depends on the university, so make sure you take that into consideration when applying, and keep in mind that you are likely to have some extra restrictions due to issues such as timetabling once you get there.
4. It’s a pointless degree
In my personal opinion, there is no degree that is pointless (with a few exceptions - sorry Professional Golf students). A huge part of going to university and getting a degree is the ‘soft skills’ that teachers always bang on about and seem like a load of utter rubbish, but it is true that employers are often looking to see that you can apply yourself well and work in a pressured environment rather than looking for the specific expertise that comes with your degree. A large proportion of graduate jobs (I think a speaker at my school said around 60% but don’t quote me on that) don’t ask for a specific degree in terms of subject, but just require some sort of university level qualification. It’s a sign of intelligence and independence which is hard to show as easily as with a degree.
Aside from that, there are a multitude of career opportunities for people with Korean degrees, whether it be translation, interpretation, international relations and politics, teaching, business, research, and many more. The opportunity to work abroad is at your fingertips, especially after having the experience of living in Korea for a year, and there are several different pathways you can choose due to the breadth of the course. There are also good post-graduate options if you’re looking to stay in education. It helps that languages are in high demand nowadays as well, with fewer and fewer people taking it past A-Levels. There will be demand for your knowledge!
1. It’s purely language
This is a misconception about any language degree in general, but a lot of people assume that because you’re doing a Korean degree, all of your modules will be language-learning modules. This is absolutely not the case. Honestly, it would be pretty boring if that’s all that was in the degree and definitely wouldn’t give you the right skills and understanding to be able to use the language properly. In fact, for the first and third year (second year being spent abroad) only half of your modules are language based and in the fourth year, a quarter are language modules*. So really, it’s more sensible to look at it as half a language degree and half an East Asian Studies degree. Non-language modules can cover a range of topics such as history, politics, art, cinema, sociology, and literature.
*using the credits system and the SOAS course structure
2. It’s purely about Korea
To be fair, this is a very understandable mistake to make, and I find myself having to explain this quite often. As I said in misconception #1, half of the course is essentially made up of East Asian Studies modules, meaning you don’t just learn about Korea, but also learn about the East Asian region as a whole. This includes South Korea, North Korea, China, and Japan as the main focus countries.
3. It’s too narrow
This is another understandable misconception, considering the title is ‘Korean’, but to be fair to the universities, it would be very difficult to properly represent what this course is about without having a title about three paragraphs long. As I’ve said in #1 and #2, you cover a range of topics focusing on countries from all over East Asia, but you also have a huge selection of modules to choose from for your ‘open option(s)'. This is where you can pick a certain number of credits from any department in the university, allowing you to add to the breadth of your course as you wish. This means you could pick up Buddhism in Pre-Modern China to supplement your Buddhist Arts in Korea module, or choose to do the Modern History of Japan module to broaden your course.
The extent of the freedom you get in picking free options and the range of topics you can choose from definitely depends on the university, so make sure you take that into consideration when applying, and keep in mind that you are likely to have some extra restrictions due to issues such as timetabling once you get there.
4. It’s a pointless degree
In my personal opinion, there is no degree that is pointless (with a few exceptions - sorry Professional Golf students). A huge part of going to university and getting a degree is the ‘soft skills’ that teachers always bang on about and seem like a load of utter rubbish, but it is true that employers are often looking to see that you can apply yourself well and work in a pressured environment rather than looking for the specific expertise that comes with your degree. A large proportion of graduate jobs (I think a speaker at my school said around 60% but don’t quote me on that) don’t ask for a specific degree in terms of subject, but just require some sort of university level qualification. It’s a sign of intelligence and independence which is hard to show as easily as with a degree.
Aside from that, there are a multitude of career opportunities for people with Korean degrees, whether it be translation, interpretation, international relations and politics, teaching, business, research, and many more. The opportunity to work abroad is at your fingertips, especially after having the experience of living in Korea for a year, and there are several different pathways you can choose due to the breadth of the course. There are also good post-graduate options if you’re looking to stay in education. It helps that languages are in high demand nowadays as well, with fewer and fewer people taking it past A-Levels. There will be demand for your knowledge!
Hiii!!
Can't believe I've only stumbled upon this post now!
But I'm in a fairly similar situation as you are.
I do the IB and I've been predicted 42 (776HL) and I've applied to Cambridge SOAS Sheffield and Edinburgh.
Thankfully I've got an offer from all of them!
I was wondering if you applied for just Korean or ?
I've applied to 2 courses at SOAS, one is Korean on it's own and the other being Korean and Japanese. I've been given an offer in both. (My offers are both for 35 with 665HL so it's like ABB?)
I'm probably going to put Cambridge as my confirmed choice but I'm struggling to decide if I should do just Korean or Korean and Japanese.
So I just wanna know about others really!
Just a bit of background about me, I'm from Hong Kong but I go to a boarding school in Oxford for 4 years now. I've been into Korean culture, drama, music, history etc for a long period of time so I've decided to teach myself Korean about 3 years ago. I then did TOPIK Level 2 last Easter and passing it with 192/200.
Can't believe I've only stumbled upon this post now!
But I'm in a fairly similar situation as you are.
I do the IB and I've been predicted 42 (776HL) and I've applied to Cambridge SOAS Sheffield and Edinburgh.
Thankfully I've got an offer from all of them!
I was wondering if you applied for just Korean or ?
I've applied to 2 courses at SOAS, one is Korean on it's own and the other being Korean and Japanese. I've been given an offer in both. (My offers are both for 35 with 665HL so it's like ABB?)
I'm probably going to put Cambridge as my confirmed choice but I'm struggling to decide if I should do just Korean or Korean and Japanese.
So I just wanna know about others really!
Just a bit of background about me, I'm from Hong Kong but I go to a boarding school in Oxford for 4 years now. I've been into Korean culture, drama, music, history etc for a long period of time so I've decided to teach myself Korean about 3 years ago. I then did TOPIK Level 2 last Easter and passing it with 192/200.
Yeah it would be great if you can check your subject for all the existing universities ,but that is new technology that they need to inovate
You need ti know minimum 1language ,if you have decided that to be German,is Ok
Original post by Clauchanhyyy
Hiii!!
Can't believe I've only stumbled upon this post now!
But I'm in a fairly similar situation as you are.
I do the IB and I've been predicted 42 (776HL) and I've applied to Cambridge SOAS Sheffield and Edinburgh.
Thankfully I've got an offer from all of them!
I was wondering if you applied for just Korean or ?
I've applied to 2 courses at SOAS, one is Korean on it's own and the other being Korean and Japanese. I've been given an offer in both. (My offers are both for 35 with 665HL so it's like ABB?)
I'm probably going to put Cambridge as my confirmed choice but I'm struggling to decide if I should do just Korean or Korean and Japanese.
So I just wanna know about others really!
Just a bit of background about me, I'm from Hong Kong but I go to a boarding school in Oxford for 4 years now. I've been into Korean culture, drama, music, history etc for a long period of time so I've decided to teach myself Korean about 3 years ago. I then did TOPIK Level 2 last Easter and passing it with 192/200.
Can't believe I've only stumbled upon this post now!
But I'm in a fairly similar situation as you are.
I do the IB and I've been predicted 42 (776HL) and I've applied to Cambridge SOAS Sheffield and Edinburgh.
Thankfully I've got an offer from all of them!
I was wondering if you applied for just Korean or ?
I've applied to 2 courses at SOAS, one is Korean on it's own and the other being Korean and Japanese. I've been given an offer in both. (My offers are both for 35 with 665HL so it's like ABB?)
I'm probably going to put Cambridge as my confirmed choice but I'm struggling to decide if I should do just Korean or Korean and Japanese.
So I just wanna know about others really!
Just a bit of background about me, I'm from Hong Kong but I go to a boarding school in Oxford for 4 years now. I've been into Korean culture, drama, music, history etc for a long period of time so I've decided to teach myself Korean about 3 years ago. I then did TOPIK Level 2 last Easter and passing it with 192/200.
Congratulations on your offers, that's incredible, and your TOPIK too! I only applied to pure Korean courses, mostly because that's my main focus and I found that the majority of unis that do combined or related courses have Japan & Korea departments that are significantly weaker in the Korea side than Japan side (SOAS being the main exception to this, but also Sheffield). Since I'm mostly interested in Korean, it just made more sense for me to apply to pure Korean courses and be able to be part of a department that is really strong for Korean specifically.
I did think about doing Japanese with Korean at Sheffield and SOAS, but since I've never had the opportunity to study either of them in great depth, I would essentially be learning both from scratch and to do two languages which are already pretty difficult on their own at the same time didn't seem like the best idea haha but I might pick up some Japanese modules in 3rd or 4th year if I'm still interested. Since you already know a good amount of Korean, it would probably be much easier for you to do the two languages at once, and if you have as much passion about Japan as you do with Korea then if I were you I'd do it combined. It's an extra language under your belt so why not? Although, it would mean that a good two thirds of your course is just language learning, so I guess it depends whether you're more interested in the languages themselves or the culture too. If you decide you don't want to do both any more, I imagine it would be quite easy to switch courses at the end of first year anyway.
Original post by VihVeselina
You need ti know minimum 1language ,if you have decided that to be German,is Ok
You're not required to know any other languages, but they prefer for you to have at least a GCSE language. That can be any language at all, so German would be fine. That's the GCSE I took anyway.
Original post by umbrellala
Congratulations on your offers, that's incredible, and your TOPIK too! I only applied to pure Korean courses, mostly because that's my main focus and I found that the majority of unis that do combined or related courses have Japan & Korea departments that are significantly weaker in the Korea side than Japan side (SOAS being the main exception to this, but also Sheffield). Since I'm mostly interested in Korean, it just made more sense for me to apply to pure Korean courses and be able to be part of a department that is really strong for Korean specifically.
I did think about doing Japanese with Korean at Sheffield and SOAS, but since I've never had the opportunity to study either of them in great depth, I would essentially be learning both from scratch and to do two languages which are already pretty difficult on their own at the same time didn't seem like the best idea haha but I might pick up some Japanese modules in 3rd or 4th year if I'm still interested. Since you already know a good amount of Korean, it would probably be much easier for you to do the two languages at once, and if you have as much passion about Japan as you do with Korea then if I were you I'd do it combined. It's an extra language under your belt so why not? Although, it would mean that a good two thirds of your course is just language learning, so I guess it depends whether you're more interested in the languages themselves or the culture too. If you decide you don't want to do both any more, I imagine it would be quite easy to switch courses at the end of first year anyway.
I did think about doing Japanese with Korean at Sheffield and SOAS, but since I've never had the opportunity to study either of them in great depth, I would essentially be learning both from scratch and to do two languages which are already pretty difficult on their own at the same time didn't seem like the best idea haha but I might pick up some Japanese modules in 3rd or 4th year if I'm still interested. Since you already know a good amount of Korean, it would probably be much easier for you to do the two languages at once, and if you have as much passion about Japan as you do with Korea then if I were you I'd do it combined. It's an extra language under your belt so why not? Although, it would mean that a good two thirds of your course is just language learning, so I guess it depends whether you're more interested in the languages themselves or the culture too. If you decide you don't want to do both any more, I imagine it would be quite easy to switch courses at the end of first year anyway.
Thanks for the quick reply! I'm leaning towards choosing Japanese and Korean as my insurance choice as you've said it's an extra language so why not! Plus I'm interested in translation for my future job so let's see where it goes ahahahah
Original post by Clauchanhyyy
Thanks for the quick reply! I'm leaning towards choosing Japanese and Korean as my insurance choice as you've said it's an extra language so why not! Plus I'm interested in translation for my future job so let's see where it goes ahahahah
Well if you're interested in translation then you'll probably get a lot more jobs if you have both of them! Good luck with everything
Original post by Insecable
This sound exciting. I'm excited to read about your journey even though I have no interest in studying Korean personally. Best of luck!
Thank-you!
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