The average student here takes around 20 credits, which means around 6 or 7 classes a semester at my host school, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies. Students must double major at this school, so most students will take a language and a business degree. The students typically split it between taking two years of a language and two years of their other major. Can you imagine the amount of studying they have to do? The grading system here is more difficult than back home. For starters, in the United States, we use the absolute grading system: our grades are dependent on how well we do and not others. But in Korea, they use the relative system. The scores are all based on who got the highest score. But luckily for us exchange students, we don’t get graded in the same pool as the Korean students. Instead, we must compete against others. This is better for us as most other countries don’t have to worry about their grades to the level that Korean students do.
To keep up with the amount of studying students must do, school provides many different rooms for students to use. Around midterms and finals, these rooms are packed. And right now, rooms are more packed than usual. The library is under construction, so we have lost a lot of study space. But students have found a way around this issue; they go to cafes to study. Remember how I mentioned that there were themed cafes? There are even study cafés near to schools. Unlike a regular café, these cafes work a little differently. You first need to make an account and then tell a machine how long you are planning to stay here and study.
So these are just some of the ways in which the Korean and American study systems vary! Which system sounds better to you?
