Fall 2025 Semester — University of Seoul
Shao Ying “Kitty Wang” Wang
3 days ago
Seoul City University’s tuition should be the cheapest in all of Seoul, but the teaching quality is very good. The teachers are all nice and dedicated. Classes are small, about 13 students per class. Teachers will attend to everyone’s pronunciation, conversation, spelling errors, etc., and there is also one-on-one consultation time to care about students’ lives, social activities, and academic work.
The only thing to note is that instruction and materials are provided entirely in Korean, so if you come without any knowledge of the kana and basic vocabulary, it will be very difficult.
The language school offers some additional courses that you can apply to join for free, such as specialized classes for TOPIK preparation, specialized classes for university entrance, and so on. There are also tandem conversation classes where Korean university students practice conversation and chat with us or help us understand the course materials. It's great when you meet a dedicated language partner.
For outdoor field trips, there are two each semester. This semester we went to Gyeongbokgung and Nami Island. At Gyeongbokgung we mainly tried on hanbok and took beautiful photos. Nami Island had a large-scale outdoor game where classes played through checkpoints as teams — it was a lot of fun!
Also, the language school basically has a dance club. There isn’t a dance teacher; the language school teacher in charge helps us borrow the school’s dance studio to practice, completely free!
For campus life, there are very few student dormitories provided, so it's highly likely you'll have to live in an exam hall or rent a place. The dining halls are excellent — there are four in total, each selling different types of meals that are cheap and tasty. There's even a website to check the daily menu, and the restaurants usually display actual examples of the dishes at their entrances. There are many campus events; sometimes there are concerts or parties with alcohol, sometimes club performances, and there are many on-campus or intercollegiate club promotion events. They often give away free gifts and food, which is very fun.
Overall, I feel the cost-performance is very high; learning Korean was very efficient, the campus is beautiful, and there were many fun activities. The teachers cared about us, and the school provided many resources for daily life and learning. I happily spent this fall semester!