INTRODUCTION / PROGRAM BUDGET

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I spent my summer '05 at Pohang, South Korea as a participant of IPENG study abroad program.

The program consists of two distinct activities: Research Participation and Campus English.

RESEARCH

For Research, POSTECH places you under one of their research labs based on your major. Depending on the department, you may be able to request a certain area, get automatically placed in a lab, or receive a list of available labs. Many undergraduate students do not have a particular preference; if you do, however, I suggest you speak up and make sure you tell them the preferred area of research before beginning the program. Since this program is for undergraduate students, I can tell you for sure that you will be one of the youngest and inexperienced members. But there is nothing to fear. You are there to learn, and people in the lab will be more than happy to assist you. They do speak English pretty well, and you will also be able to experience some outside-of-work cultures and social events with the graduate students, although not as frequently as you do with Campus English members. I will talk about my own research experience in my Research page.

CAMPUS ENGLISH

For Campus English, you are an English conversation leader. For POSTECH students, it is an undergrad summer course that is specially designed for improving conversational English. Along with the registered students and other native speaker leaders, you will live in a specially designated dorm community in which you are only allowed to speak English.  Do not worry about violations of that rule - the students registered and went through the interview process for enrolling in the course, with a real desire to develop their English speaking skills. They will speak English even if you tell them not to.

The program then divides the students into groups. For our program, there were four groups, and each group consisted of 5 members and 2 leaders. You go through suggested and required activities as a leader, while meeting with your group every night for about 3 hours. It is a very laid-back environment, and is closer to "hanging out" then "studying." In addition, there are funded field trips that groups independently plan, almost every weekend. For some of you, the best news might be that you get paid compensations of about $1000 for this program. Sounds interesting? Take a look at my own Campus English experience at the Campus English page.

PROGRAM BUDGET

This is copied from my actual summer billing account:

Plus, I paid an amount between $400-500 in advance when I first signed up. That was after getting $100 off the program fee for signing up during program of the week period. All of that adds up to around $1,700. If you do student insurance, then it will be slightly higher.

Now that I gave the billed amount, let me tell you this. If you do the Korea program, you are at a pretty big advantage, financially. One is in personal expense. Remember, you get paid about $1000 for doing Campus English. That is a big help, if not the coverage for the whole summer, for your personal expense. Secondly, housing fee is free for Campus English leaders in POSTECH. Thirdly, airfare is paid for if you do the fellowship program (like this web site), and airfare to Asia is over $1000 for sure. Take advantage of it.