서울대생들은 영어를 얼마나 잘할까? 대학교에서 쓰는 영어표현(벼락치기, 족보, 교양 등) | 미국vs한국 대학 차이점 인터뷰(+무료 학습자료드려요!)

Hello everybody! I have big news. I applied to SNU and was accepted!

Woo!

Just kidding. Today I am taking a tour of the campus to teach you university English. Let's get started. I came across some people playing soccer at the soccer field. It makes me think of football in the US because college sports are huge in America. I have so many good memories of going to the college football stadium and watching a game. My tour guide just arrived.

Hi, Silvia! Hi!

Good to see you!

Long time no see!

This is Silvia from Finland, and she's a full-time student here at SNU. What are you majoring in?

Korean Linguistics.

I think she's Korean at this point. No. Totally fluent. What's your favorite place on campus?

Maybe the pond or the library.

I always love a university library. So what's our first stop on today's tour?

I think we should go that way. Then we will pass the College of Art and then College of Humanities.

Let's go. So you did your bachelor's in Finland?

Yes, in Helsinki.

How is it different?

In Finland, it's more individualistic. We don't have this one campus where everything is located. Also, the professor-student relationship is different. In Korea, I feel like they tend to help more, or they are like more interested even in personal level how we are doing. Oh, that's so nice! Maybe that's also because I'm a foreigner. I'm very lucky to have this kind of professors.

Yes, that's good. I love how this campus is surrounded by nature. It's very peaceful. The students must need this. They have such a stressful life. Yeah, doing homework and studying all the time. It must be nice to walk outside and enjoy this nature. Mm-hmm. This is the new library behind me. I love visiting university libraries. Even though it's summer, I bet there are lots of students inside cramming for tests or pulling all-nighters. I heard that you can get a meal at the cafeteria for ₩1,000. So I'm going to head there now and grab a bite to eat. Let's find somewhere to sit. Wow, I can't believe this is only ₩1,000. That's less than $1 US. So cheap and it actually looks quite nice. We've got rice, some radish and side dishes, and this—

try a piece.

Let's see. I think it's chicken. It's similar to tangsooyook. Not bad. In the US, it's quite different. Most students have a meal plan that gives them access to different cafeterias on campus, and they pay that as part of their tuition.

How much is your tuition?

Is that shade? Let's go return my tray. You can buy lots of SNU merch at the store here. You can tell they have a lot of school spirit. In Korea, I notice a lot of university students wearing varsity jackets. I don't think it's quite as common in the US. Most people in the US just buy hoodies or sweatpants. I found the school mascot. It's so cute! I feel like I'm hiking now. Since Korea is so mountainous, I realized a lot of universities are all uphill. You have to work hard to get to classes. We picked up another friend on our campus tour. Can you introduce yourself?

Yeah, of course. My name is Hyunji and I am now graduated from Seoul National University. Thank you. I studied business and computer science and I'm actually from the States. So I lived there all my life and then I came here for college, spent 5 years here.

How do you think college life here in Korea compares to college life in the US?

Maybe a clear similarity is that you start off with your gen ed classes. So everyone takes the same classes in their freshman year as in the States, and then you move into your major-specific courses in your second, third, and fourth years. But then a difference I would say is that you have more time in college in Korea to think about what you want to do. So most of the time freshman year is just spent partying. You spent 18 years of your life studying, so now you're off to school and you're partying. And then sophomore year, it's like a transition period. And then I would say junior and senior years, really when you start to think about what you want to do. And in these years, I've noticed a lot of students will take a gap year just to take a breather or to think about what they want to do or pursue an internship. Whereas in the States, I've noticed that people graduate in 4 years. Gap years aren't very common, and people will start to do internships very early on, even your first or second year.

Do people take electives as well? Yeah, of course.

So electives are required in some sense. It's kind of contradictory, but because you have to fulfill a certain number of credits. Some fun electives that I've done have been sports ones. So there's golf and there's Pilates. I've also taken a class about Disney, so that was really fun too. So electives are definitely part of our curriculum here as well. Another really big difference is the club culture. So you make a lot of friends doing clubs here, whereas in the States, I don't know if club culture is nearly as big of a part of college life.

In the US, Greek life is a big part of the college experience, but you don't have it here in Korea, right?

No, not at all.

In American colleges, we have something called Greek life. Girls can go to sororities and boys can be in fraternities, and you pay money to be in this club. They become kind of your college family. They even call each other sisters or brothers. So at my college, there was one street and it was filled with sororities and fraternities, and it was known as the party street. They're kind of known for being party animals. Sometimes there is a problem with hazing, which is bullying the first year. Not always the case, but it happens. In the US, you were required to live on campus for the first at least semester. I want to say the first year even, maybe. My first year of college, I went in blind. I didn't know my roommates at all. I had 3 roommates, and we say "go in blind" when you don't know who they are. They're just randomly assigned to you. I got really lucky. I had great roommates. When I lived in a dorm, we had an RA, and basically they were the babysitter or the boss of your floor. They just had to make sure that you didn't have alcohol in your room. My RA was really cool, so he'd always give us a warning. He'd knock on the doors and say, "If you have anything to hide, hide it now!" I think they have a similar system here in Korea. Are the dorms separated by gender or are any of the dorms co-ed?

Undergrad dorms are separated. For master's students, there is one building where both Females and males live, but they have different floors.

This is one of the top schools, so I feel like you must get a lot of homework. It must be really tough here. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Like I said, I major in business and computer science, so I think the majors are very different. In business, I don't really get that many homework assignments. Rather, it's like one big term project or like a group project. CS, computer science, we get a lot of homework. So it's pretty heavy on the amount of coursework we have to do. How about you?

During master's, instead of homework, we have one bigger final report that we submit.

So in order to graduate, since you're a master's student, do you have to write a thesis?

Yes, I'm working on my thesis at the moment. I have been working on it for a few semesters now, and I will graduate next semester.

Congratulations! You guys seem like very hard workers. I remember skipping class a lot in college. Do you ever skip?

We have a system where you can just tap your ID card on this attendance checker. It's all electronic, or you can even do a QR scan of your student ID. A lot of people will just tap or scan, then they will leave really fast before the professor walks in. But when it's like 300 people in one class, It's hard for the professor to know who's there or not?

For us, our class size is very small, usually less than 10 people. And professors are close with the master students. So even if they don't look at the name list, they remember who's in the class.

So it's harder in your classes. You can't get away with much. I hear the terms sunbae and hubei a lot in Korea here. Is that real?

It is definitely real. We definitely do have osanbae, hubei culture. So one of the ways that the Sambae will help the hubae is that they will pass down what's called "주포" , which is basically a collection of previous tests and homework assignments that this professor has given. And that is one of the ways that you can be more prepared for a class than maybe your peers who don't have that sambae-hubae relationship. Also, it's just the nature of Korea. It's very hierarchical. So you have like "언니" , "oppa" . So that makes it really easy to maintain a sambae-hubae relationship. And it's a really easy way to call them if you forget their name.

That's the cheat code. I'm jealous. I want some bae. You just graduated. You're about to graduate. What are your next plans in life?

I am actually off to law school in the States. I will be continuing my studies for the next 3 years. After law school, I'm still undetermined on what exactly I want to pursue, but I'm really looking forward to continuing to study and getting started on my legal career.

Good luck.

Thank you.

That's amazing.

Good luck. Thank you.

I want to do my PhD. PhD here in Korea.

Will you get your PhD at SNU?

Yes, that's what I want to do.

Congratulations! Well, thank you ladies so much for joining me today and giving me a tour of the school. It made me reminisce, so I appreciate it.

Of course, thank you for having us on your channel.

Anytime, anytime.

Thank you.

Thanks for watching, and I'll see you next time.

Bye!