[0:00]you have probably convinced yourself that the only way to get into KAIST is if you have insane stats or if you have won an Olympiad, but I am here to tell you that's a myth, not fully true. There are so many ways you can get into KAIST, and a very important factor in your application, just like any other university, is your personal statement. So in this video, I'm going to help you go around it and I'm going to give you some tips on what to do and what not to do in your application. The credentials I have for this video is that I attended KAIST's high school, so the teachers in my high school spent years writing recommendation letters for students or helping them prepare their own personal statements. So I have a lot of tips and the help of ideas from my teachers, from my peers, or even from my seniors and I want to pass those down to you, okay? Let's go. In this video, we're going to talk about direction, GPA, Olympiads, and we'll clarify the fantasies around them. And we are going to talk about what admission actually reads in your personal statement. Before this video starts, make sure to take a pen and a pencil, so you can write those down to save up some of your time in future, so you don't have to come back and rewatch this. Before I move forward, I want to introduce myself. My name is Safina, and I am double majoring in aerospace engineering and electrical engineering at KAIST. This is my senior year, and I use this YouTube channel to talk about KAIST and life in Korea. And if that's something that's interesting to you, you can always subscribe. Part number one, academic direction. Academic direction is certainly not your major. Academic direction is something specific that could be backed up by what you have done, by the books you read, by the classes you took, by the projects you took part in. If you say I like physics, that's not direction. Instead, you could say something like, I am interested in electrons and their interaction with photons. That is obviously a better direction because physics itself is so huge, and even just saying electrons and interaction with photons can be big as well, but it's a lot more specified. It shows at least which field of physics you're somewhat more interested in, and you don't need to know everything about it. You're obviously not expected to be a great researcher in this area, and this is what most people get confused, it comes to choosing your department in your application. Let's say you're interested in computation. This could lean into Computer Science department, but at the same time, this could lean into Mathematics department, this could also lead to Electrical Engineering department because they have computation division. This is where you need to be strategic. Just to let you know, when you apply to KAIST, the most two top departments, and I mean top only by the amount of students that they have, is Computer Science and it's Electrical Engineering. So in your application, if you choose either of these departments, just know your chances of getting in are slightly decreased, almost everyone is applying to those departments, so like, so the competition is just so much higher.
[3:12]And you could easily apply to any other natural science department, like you want to join electrical engineering, let's say you want to work on devices or whatever, you can easily choose physics department. You know, if you if you want to do computer science, you can easily choose mathematics, cause when you come here, most of the computer science is just you have to study so much math in order to get there, you know? One piece of advice here would be if your academic direction can actually lean into one of the natural science or mathematics departments, choose those as those departments are not saturated. This way you will decrease your own competition and why not? Why not increase your own chances of getting in? And remember, everyone starts in the school of freshman, meaning after you get in, you are not assigned to a department, you will go through one year of education, just like any other freshman.
[4:09]You will take the same mandatory classes, and only by the end of your first year are you to choose your department, so you don't have to worry with whatever department you put in your application. But be careful here, do not be dishonest, do not lie, don't just choose, let's say, bio department, but you'd have nothing to back up that direction. For example, if you haven't taken any bio or chemistry courses, obviously don't choose like biomedical engineering in your application, right? Now let's move to my application, and I'll give you examples, so you can kind of see how it goes. In my application, I selected aerospace engineering as a department of my choice, and to show that direction in my personal statement, I didn't just say, hey, I like aerospace engineering and I like flying planes or whatever. No, I clearly stated that I took actual classes like general physics I, project physics, some other physics related classes, but on top of that, I also added that I took Calculus 1, 2 and 3, because there isn't any engineering without the math classes, right? Here, to clarify this, you do not need perfect scores from neither physics or math classes, because neither did I have them. It's supposed to be hard and that's okay. The point is that those classes are in your transcript. The point is that they were hard, but you still took them. Now, section 3. Let's talk about GPA, and I'm going to be honest, guys, KAIST does care about GPA. People who come here do come with high GPA, yet we still have a lot of people who come with an average GPA or even a low GPA. I know a person with GPA as low as 3 out of 4.3, and they still got in. Now let's talk about the trend of your GPA because that also matters. Let's say you have a low GPA, but as long as your GPA is somehow going up, that's good, that shows that you didn't give up, that shows that you kept fighting. Now let's talk about the different side of GPA. Not only does the number matter, but what the number represents, so what courses you took. Okay, here is a story that I feel as though I need to be mentioning here. Sometimes, guys, can require an interview from you, and that interview will be a math interview where you are required to solve a few calculus problems. And here is what you need to know. Back in my high school, and I'm going to talk about two people, there is a person who took Calculus 2 class with me and got a grade C. And there is a student who did not take Calculus 2 class at all, both applied to KAIST. The person who got C from Calculus 2 ended up getting admitted into KAIST, okay? And person who did not take Calculus 2 ended up having an interview. I'm telling you this to show that KAIST does care about all of these classes that you take and if they are actually tough classes or not. Even if you might have lower grades in them, KAIST still cares because even in this case, grade C at least shows some sort of exposure to the content, while not taking the class just creates a gap. So take that into account when you plan the classes that you're going to take. Now let's move on to section number 3. I call this Olympiads, competitions and research. This is quite literally one of the most frequent questions I was asked on my YouTube, on my Instagram. Even on my LinkedIn, people would text me to ask this, do I need Olympiads? If I don't have Olympiads, am I not going to get into KAIST? All of these people have heard stories of the ones getting into KAIST having Olympiads and I'm going to be honest with you. I personally have won several Olympiads in math and physics, and when I was applying to KAIST in my application, I did mention that I got bronze in National Physics Olympiad in my 9th grade. But there is one thing that most people do not know is that most international students at KAIST are not actually Olympiad students. So now that we have cleared that up, let's ask another question. Why are Olympiads important? Cause they do show something about a student. Olympiads are an evidence of depth and direction. Winning an Olympiad clearly shows that you have worked on this field for several years, you have put an insane amount of work, and you went and you won at some competition. That's why Olympiads are such a great thing. They show that you're not just someone who says I like physics, I like math. And let's make something clear, Olympics are not the only form of this evidence, so what you need to do is create that evidence, not lie, but create, and I'm going to help you and explain you how and what to do. It's good to participate in competitions, but there is a chance that maybe you're running out of time, or you don't have a project to present, which is also okay. You can start doing your personal project, your personal research on some specific subject. For example, in high school, I did research on a flying vehicle, and I swear, I can't even remember the name of that project. We only worked on it for three months. It was a group of four people, okay, and a teacher, okay, like, and we did not work more than like two hours a week. But what we did, we basically built an airplane out of a plastic box, and I think the only special thing that airplane had was that you could increase the length of its wing. Okay, this is not something like impressive. This was just an airplane, like literally it was nothing, but I still mentioned it in my application, you know? This project was not groundbreaking, it wasn't impressive as well, like anyone could go home and do this in a week, okay, in a week. We did not consider any physics behind it, we just built it. In my application, I mentioned it in one sentence, and I framed it really well. Important part about this is that I was applying for aerospace engineering, and I had a project that was aligned in this direction. And to be fair, I considered none of the engineering when I was doing this, okay? I mean, you're not supposed to, you're just a high schooler. What do you even know? I also did another project, and when I was doing these projects, I did not even know that there was a field called aerospace engineering. It so happened that these projects were somehow related. But this other project I did was a project from the International Physics Tournament. It's a tournament where, like, there are already pre-designed projects which you have to work on and get some sort of results. I was taking a class. Coursework was that each student has to pick one project and work on it throughout the semester. And the project that I chose was about a flying card, like a playing card in the air. Um, I had no idea what I was doing. I literally finished this project a week before I had to submit it. It was just simple, like, I swear, I was just, I made a card throwing machine out of the most basic things I could find, and once I kind of fixed that, I was using that machine to throw cards. And see how far they go, and I would change stuff like the inertia of a card by maybe adding a weight on the card or creating a hole, 'cause that all can change the inertia, you know? And that's it, and that was the project I made. Saying that I worked for a week is an exaggeration. The truth is I probably did it the day before. But, and I got AO from that class. I also mentioned that in my application. And you know what that was the second proof of my alignment with my direction and my choice of aerospace engineering. So if you're having a hard time thinking of a project, just Google it, projects already exist. You don't have to come up with something completely new because you probably won't, okay? Just do an already existing project. Just try it yourself, don't copy their results. You can use their results to inspire yourself. Doing something that already exists is better than doing nothing, and the admission officers wouldn't know what projects already exist and which ones don't, 'cause mine definitely existed. I did not make anything new, so you see the pattern of the things I've mentioned, you need something beyond grades. Don't just say physics and interesting and fascinating and blah, blah, blah. No, you're not going to say that. You need to separate yourself from everyone else who will. And again, here I'm going to mention a story about a friend I had, who attended the same high school with me, an extremely hard working person, very smart. This person even published a research paper while being in high school, but unfortunately, they got rejected from KAIST. And I had a chance of speaking with this friend of mine, and she told me that in her personal statement, she sounded as if she was showing off. Don't be like, I'm the best of all. No one compares to me. No, you're not going to do that, okay? You are not going to do that. You would want to seem humble, you would want to seem composed, you would want to seem like someone who has a plan or dream, okay? Not someone who is better than everyone else. And now let's go to section number 4. Personal statement and evidence of depth. Throughout this whole video, I've been trying to promote and push this idea of evidence of depth to you. And if there's something you take from this video, I hope it's the evidence of depth. Now let's move on to personal statement. I'm going to take some parts of my own personal statement and bring them to your attention, so you can find them useful, hopefully. KAIST typically has five questions they're going to ask you in your personal statement. These aren't just questions, they are mini essays that you need to answer. Each one is an opportunity to show a different side of yourself or a different achievement and what you can bring to KAIST. One very important mistake that people make is they try to drop everything in one essay, but it doesn't really help you, okay? Instead, you got to distribute your attributes and qualities among all five essays. But in my opinion, the first essay is the most important one, and as you will see, the first essay is the one that gives you the highest word count. And for this video, I actually went back to my own application and I reviewed it, and I want to be very transparent about what I explicitly name dropped in my first essay. My first essay, I name dropped my nationality, I name dropped NASA, okay? I name dropped the department I was applying to. I name dropped my high school name because to be fair, my high school is it signals prestige, as it's one of the top Korean high schools. I also talked about moving to South Korea at 15 years old. I name dropped the classes that I took. I also named them in this video earlier on. And I name dropped multiple projects that I did, which I also name dropped here in this video, as I mentioned. One of these projects was about a flying card, where I didn't just say, hey, I worked on a flying card. I mentioned aerodynamics, and let's be honest, I had no prior knowledge of aerodynamics until I came to KAIST, and I took my first aerodynamics class here in my second grade. My first essay, I even mentioned something called an, something called an USRA membership, which essentially certifies that KAIST has done significant contributions in aerospace engineering field. And I had no idea, I still do not know what USRA is, and I don't really like find that important for myself. But when I was applying to KAIST, one of the sub questions, which I've noticed they removed, but in case if they bring it back, it used to be why are you choosing KAIST, okay? You are not going to say I'm choosing KAIST because it's a cool university, it's a prestigious university, it's a university for smart people. No. KAIST already knows that and this is just giving that you haven't done your research. What I did is, let's say, I'm applying to aerospace engineering department, I went to Google, and I Googled KAIST aerospace engineering department, I went to their websites, I went around the website and I found out that KAIST Aerospace department has USRA membership. So I was like, yeah, I'm choosing KAIST because it has a USRA membership, meaning it has significant contributions in the field. That's it, and on top of that, I mentioned that I want to work on wing engineering problems, something along those lines.
[17:30]I just took it from the website. And I'm not saying that you have to be dishonest. Research and something that you find interesting add that to your application. Okay, my second question, I name dropped the other areas of field that I worked on. So I have worked in aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, I also had experience in what is it called, environmental engineering. I had experience in these three fields, and so I kind of mentioned that I am a person of like multitude, I can work on different fields or whatever. And then within the same question, on the second paragraph, now I wanted to show that I'm a little bit more than just researchers. So I mentioned that in my high school, I read a book. This book is quite popular, and it's really hard to read because it's so old. It's called The Heart of Darkness, and the book is about imperialism and colonization of Africa by the Europeans. Just opens up like a story on ethics and morality. So I wrote that in my second paragraph of the second essay. And as a closing paragraph, I wrote that a good researcher isn't someone with intelligence, but someone with ethics and responsibility. There is a reason why I follow this structure. This is an advice you have to write in your notes right now. A lot of Korean teachers back in my high school used to give a very similar advice. They would talk about that KAIST is not like other American universities. They don't really care about like the the story that you're telling or the emotions that you're putting in. They care about technicality, okay? So your essay has to be technical. Since Kai is a research oriented university, they care for technicality, but it would be nice if you just a little bit dropped something outside of that, okay? The next point is thinking differently doesn't mean clichés. So in KAIST, there's a question about thinking or acting differently from others. I personally did not write something like, I don't give up, and you shouldn't write that either. That that doesn't make you anyhow different. Instead, I told a story of how when I was applying to become a physics Olympiad student, I faced a lot of sexism. One thing I want you to notice here is the pattern, okay? I am literally mentioning problems that I've experienced while achieving this technical achievement.
[20:00]Like becoming an Olympiad student. It's not just a social injustice story, okay? This is important. Lock it. Lock it. Lock it. And now we are at the last section here. I'm just going to give some general information. A lot of people ask me on this, so I'll clarify those for you. First of all, when you get into KAIST, you are automatically getting a scholarship. Every international student who gets here for undergrad, your education here is free. And on top of that, you get a stipend of around $300 per month. Also, we have dormitories. Dormitories are about $100 each month, which is somewhat cheap. Can be slightly more expensive, depending on which dormitory you live in, or slightly cheaper, depending on which dorms you choose for yourself. One second thing I want to clarify is that KAIST has country-based quotas, meaning depending on what country you come from, you compete internally with the applicants from your own country. So for example, students who come from Kazakhstan, almost every student coming from Kazakhstan belongs to one of the two top schools. They are either from niche, which I think is Nazarbayev International School, or they're from the Turkish Lyceum, okay? So most of the Kazakh students are from those two schools, and most applicants low key compete with with with themselves. However, there are also students who come from like countryside schools. I personally recently made a friend who told me he's one of the only Kazakhs who does not come from these top two schools. So if you are not from some top school, do not worry, you still have a chance, okay? And another example I'm going to give is Azerbaijan. Most people from Azerbaijan have Olympiads who come here. So maybe competition between them is even more higher, maybe it's harder to get in here because there are people here who have like bronze and silver, maybe even gold from international Olympiads. So for you, it will be important to know your own circle and people from your country who are applying. You need to see what achievements they have, okay? Because you are always compared from your own peers. And I think this is all for today's video. If you've enjoyed it, I hope this was helpful. If you have any questions, you can always write them down and I'll always reply. If you found this helpful, please leave a like, you can comment, and you can always follow this channel for more content. Thank you very much for watching.
