▲ Mr. Cho Bum-jin of the Office of Graduate Admission Affairs introduces its functions

Guess which office is beloved by outsiders, but which Postechians are uninterested in. If there is an office which you have not been to after you entered POSTECH, that would be the answer. Yes, it is the Office of Admission Affairs, which works to select qualified students as new Postechians. Different from admission of undergraduates, that of graduates largely depends on the views of particular departments and laboratories. Nevertheless, the Office of Graduate Admission Affairs performs a lot of activities in order to attract better students.

In actual admission, the Office concentrates on discerning whether applicants satisfy basic terms, such as GPAs and qualified English test scores. Regarding applicants not only as students but also researchers, because POSTECH is an elite research institute, it is by the faculty council of each department that applicants are finnaly judged. After the selection, most departments assign students to a laboratory and advisor based on student preferences. A rising problem is that information about advisors and laboratories gained by most students before entrance is not sufficient to make a decision, which will last for several years. A considerable solution is to give fair chances for newly enrolled students to select a laboratory and an advisor after a half-year or a year of learning, and some departments such as Physics and Materials Science and Engineering follow that system, as does the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) .

The most basic work of the Office of Graduate Admission Affairs is the rearrangement of documents. They can offer an integrated admission system for applicants and help communication between departments and applicants.

Probably, the most elaborate business of the Office of Graduate Admission Affairs is promoting the POSTECH Graduate School to more students. In Korea, three kinds of public relations are conducted. At first, it opens a ‘Visiting Day’ for elite students from major universities, giving them chances to meet renowned professors and facilities. The second is briefing sessions on admission provided annually in several cities in Korea. Next year, the Office is planning to open those sessions directly in other major universities. In addition, the Office operates an admission site and offers information to portals, and it is planning to enhance online promotion as well.

Promotion abroad is as important as in Korea. POSTECH, despite its verified competitiveness by the world university ranking conducted by the Times of London, is not yet well known worldwide. To invite great foreign students and increase awareness, POSTECH launched overseas offices in Beijing and Hanoi. Connecting with them, POSTECH has held overseas admission briefing sessions annually in China, Singapore, and Vietnam. Recently, promotion for overseas Koreans is seriously considered. POSTECH also participates in government-conducted national promotion of studying in Korea in Mongolia and Turkey. Furthermore, POSTECH launched a new promotion program this year, an international internship that invites 40 students and grants a semester of internship.

Ms. Kim Tae-young, who manages international promotion in the Office of Graduate Admission Affairs, gave a good tip for international applicants: “International students usually don’t select their laboratories and advisors. It can be understood that they have not much information to determine them, but I think deciding them before entrance with more consideration is better for the admission and life in POSTECH.”