As for the academic part, many Korean college students had a hard time getting used to the college type of school work, which I can totally imagine and understand. The traditional Korean high school education, similar to Chinese education, is focused on repetitive practice and memorization. However, in college, presentations and projects require much more critical thinking and creativity. Group work and writing paper are also big challenges: many students do not know how to collaborate with others effectively, neither can they write academic essays appropriately with correct format and bibliography.
Interestingly, many Korean student actually do not pay as much attention on GPA as on foreign language exams and certificates. This facts sounds surprising to me at first because in the US, most students study for the school work such as papers and midterms. However, I realized that the situation in China is kind of similar- a large amount of students want to study abroad desperately so they spend a lot of time on TOEFL, GRE and CPA, etc.
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