My last post was in October. Now it’s February, and a lot of things have changed. For one, I’m not in Vancouver anymore – I’m in Taiwan with my friend Stefanie!

I know my blog is called ‘sonia goes seoul searching’, but before I head off to Seoul to start my exchange program I’m on vacation in Taiwan for 6 days. Today was the first day in Taiwan, and my feet are really feeling the pain right now. The above picture is us in front of Taipei 101! I will post more about Taiwan at a later date, but I wanted to write about course registration first.

Yonsei changed their course registration from previous years, so it was quite difficult for my friends and I to grasp the concept of their course registration. They now use a mileage system instead of a first-come-first-serve system, and it took me a lot of time to decide which courses I wanted to take. I’ll explain a bit more about that later, but I wanted to explain how I decided which courses to take first.

I actually started looking at courses a few months back, when the course list had just come out with no syllabi. What I did was I looked at the course syllabi from previous years in order to get a good grasp of what the course was about. To get there, first go to the Yonsei Portal, then press on ‘Course Catalogue and Syllabus: Undergraduate and Graduate”. You’ll get a pop-up window; Yonsei recommends you use IE over any other browser, but I’m used to using Chrome and I found that it worked fine save for some scrolling problems. In the ‘semester’ section, if you’re wanting to look at the previous years’ syllabi, make sure you change the year. The ‘term’ does matter, because each term offers a different course – so you’re going to want to look through the different terms to find the course you’re looking for. The next drop-down menu should start with ‘University College’, but go ahead and change that to the faculty which contains the subjects that you’re interested in taking. In the last drop-down menu are the different majors; then press the magnifying glass, and then you should get a list of courses that were offered in that year (or, if you’re looking for this year’s courses, it should offer this year’s courses).

When you’re looking at courses you can take in your exchange term, make sure you’re looking at 2 things – the times, and whether they’re being taught in English! If they’re being taught in English, there should be a small 2 in the rightmost column. IEE courses (Study Abroad Courses) and UIC (Underwood International College) courses are all taught in English, and are reserved for certain students. IEE courses (like KLI) you’re almost guaranteed to get into, but UIC courses are reserved for UIC students until a certain day, when everyone is done registering for courses. So you really need to think about what you put your major as when you submit your application! The second thing you need to look at is the time of the courses. Yonsei doesn’t state the actual time of the course, but they go by a number system. You might also want to take a look at the buildings each course is being held in, but that shouldn’t make too much of a difference.

The syllabi (usually) are out by the beginning of February – I say usually because one of mine is still not out yet. You will then receive a time to begin your mileage allowance; everyone gets the same time, so you don’t have to rush since they’re going to allot you your courses based on the mileage you’re putting down for each one. Initially, people were allowed to log in early to create wishlists since the selection was based on first come first serve; this year the portal opened on time (not early!), but a lot of people registering for courses didn’t know that (including me), so it made us quite nervous. To make things worse, many peoples’ accounts didn’t work for up to 15 minutes after the portal was supposed to open! Probably because of traffic, but you can imagine how nervous people were getting.

You can log onto the enrollment area by going back to the Yonsei Portal, and then clicking on Undergraduate Course Enrollment. If you’re a graduate, then you click on Graduate Course Enrollment. Yonsei will send you an email containing your student ID as well as your password. When I tried to enter early, it kept telling me my password was wrong, so don’t be surprised if it says that! When you enter those in, you’ll be directed to a page with two tabs near the top – course list, and wish list. I just went to wish list first and found all the courses that I was considering taking by entering in the course code and then pressing ‘add’. Then, you can start allotting your mileage.

This is the part where it gets kind of confusing. Each person has a certain number of mileage; I, for example, had 72. Each course also has a maximum amount of mileage you can account to it; for example, Family and Gender can have a maximum of 36 mileage allotted, while Health Psychology can have a maximum of 18. Depending on how much mileage you give to each course, it will tell the administrators how much you want to take that course. It’s suggested that you give minimum mileage to KLI since you’re guaranteed entry, and IEE as well since those are for exchange students only.

To give the mileage, first press apply, then change the amount of mileage you want to give. Keep in mind that you can only give mileage that you have, so if you want to move mileage around make sure you remove it and have some in your mileage bank before you add it to another course.

Side note – you’re also going to want to think about how many courses you want to take, as that will affect how you separate your mileage.

After approximately 2 days, you’re going to be able to log in and see which courses you got. You’re going to be automatically placed on a waitlist for the courses you applied for but didn’t get into. After another 2 days, registration will re-open, but on a first-come-first-serve basis. You don’t need to reapply for the courses you already applied for, because you’re automatically on the waiting list; but if you (for whatever reason) DO do it again, you’re going to be placed at the end of the waiting list. You can’t sign up or another course that’s at the same time as the one you’re in the waitlist for, nor can you be put on the waitlist for it. So during this time, you really have to think about whether you want to stay in the waitlist or just take another course. If you really don’t end up getting into the course you want, you can print off a form and get the professor to sign it; it doesn’t guarantee you getting into the course, but at least it gives you a chance!

So that’s course registration at Yonsei for you. Completely ridiculous, in my opinion, but that’s why I wrote this long thing – everything I found online didn’t really help, so if you’re reading this and you’re registering at Yonsei soon, I really hope this helps.

What were the results of my course registration? I got 3/5 courses that I want. Why did I take 5 courses? Because I already paid the full 15 credits to UBC – might as well make the most of my time there, right? This might be a super long blog post full of blocks of text, but it’s a good guide to registration (I hope) 🙂