Top 10 Universities in Korea
I’m well aware that these college rankings are kind of stupid. A futile exercise. But like it or not, the reality is that in any kind of society, it does matter what school you go to. So, we put value in these inexact sciences and I, a lemming, just go along with it. (Sigh…)
In America, the US News college rankings are the most frequently used and referred to, but I decided to go with the British Quacquarelli and Symonds, better known as QS, rankings because I thought its results better reflected the status of Korean universities in the world stage. So here they are, with my thoughts (not really mine because it’s formed from the opinions of the general public) on the schools.
You know how different ranking systems have different schools at the top? QS has MIT as the best in the world, thus best in US also, but US News ranking always has Princeton as the best, whereas Forbes had UC Berkeley as the best last year.
In Korea, the top 2 are unequivocal. You’d be up to quite a challenge to find someone who disagrees. And as you can see with QS’s world rankings, the 3, 4, 5 (71, 73, 74 in world rankings respectively) are essentially of same prestige and reputation. There is a little bit of drop-off after that, but 6 through 10 are all very good schools.
Okay, let’s take a look at these schools more closely.
Seoul National University, 서울대학교. The unquestioned top university in Korea for decades, it excels in law, medical, natural and social sciences, arts, as well as engineering. Fair or not, the students and alumni are known to have a bit of snobbish disposition toward others. The top government positions are dominated by the SNU Law School graduates. And you need to score close to perfect on the Korean SAT (dubbed “the hardest exam in the world” by BBC) to get admitted into its medical school.
This main gate, or entrance, to SNU has become an iconic image. It looks like a Korean letter “샤” (pronounced “Sha”). It’s not actually a Sha, but a combination of the Korean alphabet “ㅅ” (“s” sound) for 서울 (Seoul) and a giant “key,” as in “key to the truth and enlightenment.”
KAIST, Korea Advanced Institute for Science and Technology, 카이스트. Established in 1971 or 1984, depending on how you look at its history, this is a fairly young school that opened with the complete backing of the government. As the name suggests, the school focuses on science and engineering and many believe that KAIST has overtaken SNU in those fields.
For admitted students both domestic and foreign, 100% of the tuition and fees are covered by the government grant. On top of that, every student receives a monthly stipend of about $300 for their personal use. The school is in the city of Daejeon, about 90 minutes south of Seoul. Wonderful school, I’m sure, but there is one aspect of this school that kind of bothers me—more than half of its faculty (close to 2/3) is KAIST graduates. Not a lot of diversity there. (BTW, I happen to know this because my children were thinking about applying here.) It was interesting to find out that all classes are taught in English—a practice instituted by a former President of the school Seo Nam-pyo who had been a long-time professor at MIT.
Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), 포항공대. Established in 1986 by POSCO (Pohang Steel Co.), one of the biggest companies in Korea, it has risen to the top of the university chain very quickly. Pohang is a coastal city in southeastern part of Korea and where POSCO, the 4th largest steel producer in the world, still reigns. The school is operated very much like KAIST, in that all students receive scholarships and the cost of attending is virtually free.
They are rivals with KAIST, and they have annual competitions in athletics (soccer, baseball, basketball) and nerdy things like hacking, coding, science and math quizzes, and League of Legends.
Yonsei University, 연세대학교. The 2nd oldest university in Korea, and our first private university on this list. I went to graduate school here, and it just so happens that this is my wife’s alma mater as well. Established in 1885 by an American missionary Horace Underwood, his descendants are still involved heavily with the school. Yonsei Medical School goes toe to toe with SNU Medical School in terms of competitiveness and difficulty to get in, and it operates Severance Hospital chains in Korea, which is very highly regarded. Because of its roots and modern practices, this is a very popular school with the foreign students. My second daughter who got accepted to UC Berkeley was rejected from Yonsei. Go figure…
Their international department is very strong and the school has opened a satellite campus in Incheon to house all incoming freshmen and international students. All non-international students move to the main campus in Shinchon area of Seoul after their freshmen year. Shinchon (신촌) is a popular destination for tourists and a place for a night life also. Being a Korean who lives in Los Angeles, the entire school and area atmosphere isn’t unlike UCLA and its surrounding Westwood neighborhood. We’ll talk about something called “SKY” in the Korea University section.
Korea University, 고려대학교. Established in 1905 as a private university, there is a huge rivalry with Yonsei University. Their rankings flip-flop with Yonsei every year, it seems, but both are obviously a top class school in every way, especially its law department. Koreans refer to Seoul, Korea, and Yonsei Universities—the long standing “top 3” schools—as the “SKY” schools. There was a hugely popular TV drama called “SKY Castle” a few years ago that dealt with the dark side of the Korean college entrance practices. The word “SKY” in the title isn’t that huge blue thing we look at everyday, but refers to the 3 universities.
Long before KAIST and POSTECH started their annual competition, Yonsei and Korea Universities started their rivalry almost 100 years ago in 1925, playing against each other in soccer, basketball, baseball, ice hockey, and rugby. In recent years, they started competing in coding, e-games, and hacking. It’s not all fierce competition, though, for both schools “compete” in volunteering and public service also. At the end of the 3-day competition, there is a huge street party in the Shinchon area in front of Yonsei University, where students from both schools mingle and have fun together. It is quite a sight. The rivalry between the two schools compares with the likes of the UCLA-USC, Ohio State-Michigan, Harvard-Yale, Oxford-Cambridge, Stanford-Berkeley rivalries.
Sungkyunkwan University, 성균관대학교. Some say that this is the oldest university in Korea that was established in 1308 because the late Koryo dynasty created a place for higher learning called Sungkyunkwan in that year. It’s not wrong, but that’s a stretch. Nonetheless, it became a bona fide university in 1946. The school is indirectly owned by Samsung and its Semiconductor Design & Manufacturing major is highly sought after because of its guarantee to its students in being employed by Samsung Electronics upon graduation.
It is fast becoming a major player in software development and new wonder material graphene.
Hanyang University, 한양대학교. Started in 1939, it has become a very strong engineering school, probably ranks 3rd behind SNU and KAIST. It also has a big athletics and arts department.
I don’t know enough about this school, except that it always ranks in the top 7 universities in Korea.
Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) and number 10 Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) are both nationally funded universities dedicated to engineering.
They’re both sister schools, in a manner of speaking, to KAIST and have a very short history, less than 20 years.
Kyunghee University, 경희대학교. One of the oldest private universities established in 1911, this is THE school to go to for Oriental Medicine. You know, acupuncture and herbal (or, holistic) medicine that a lot of people swear by.
On a personal note, I had never believed in the “voodoo” acupuncture technique until I had a horrendous back and neck pain a few years ago. My western doctors told me to get a surgery (which I simply couldn’t do) but I decided to try a local acupuncturist at the behest of my mom. Long story short, after 10 sessions of acupuncture and moxibustion (뜸, pointed and targeted burning of the skin) that cost me $250 total and 30 minutes per session, my pain went away and I could walk like a normal person again. So, yeah, there is something to this acupuncture thing.
One final note about all of these top schools in Korea is that they are all actively recruiting foreign students. I think it has something to do with how these ranking institutions puts value in the percentage of international students each school has. I think it’s a welcome change. However, the admission rates at Yonsei University for foreign students is incredibly low, meaning that the competition is very high. It is said that it’s actually easier to get into Seoul National University if you’re a foreign student. My aforementioned second daughter was at least given an interview from KAIST but flat out rejected from Yonsei. But my niece who had a 2.7 GPA from an American high school with a few “F”s in her transcript was accepted to Korea University 6 years ago.