Daewoong

I applied for this scholarship under Daewoong Foundation, a huge Korean conglomerate company. So they have an annual scholarship for Korean students who are studying in Korea, Korean students studying overseas and Foreign students studying in Korea. I'm not too sure about how much the other 2 scholarships are, but the one for foreign students in Korea is a whopping 2,000,000won, which roughly equates to around $2400 SGD. I got introduced to this from some friends who attained it last year and so I tried for it, and got it!

If you're interested in the scholarship, you can have a look at the website here. First and foremost, you have to know Korean and you need to be good in it as well. The application process itself is a little bit tricky as you have to fill in a lot of information and even write certain moral essays at the back part.

After which if you pass the first round of document review, you will be called up for an interview. Mind you there are many students who apply for this so competition is high. I even had a few friends who applied for it together but did not manage to make it. Apparently there were over a thousand students who applied, and around 200 were selected for the interview, with a final count of 80 people who received the scholarship. 

If you'd like to apply look at the application section and go ahead from there. The application starts around April if I'm not wrong, and then the interview in May, with the award ceremony somewhere in June or July when the semester ends. Apparently you can also apply for the internship there however I wasn't able to commit this break as I had other plans already. It's quite a great opportunity so if you are interested and are a long-term student here in Korea, go for it!

You have to prepare for the interview as the competition is quite stiff and we had 2 separate rounds; first one being the interview round where they ask you questions, done with 8 other people, yes a total of 9 interviewees in the room. We had to go through 2 boards of interviewers who asked us a series of different questions and finally we moved on to the team-building round where they gave us a problem that we had to come up with ideas to solve. After we did the problem solving, we had to present our idea. Fearing for my slot in the scholarship, I volunteered to do the presentation as I thought it would help with my chances. Whether it really did... I was not sure, but I got it so yeah!

After the award ceremony we were given a door gift along with our certificate and then treated to a great lunch at one of the restaurants/cafes that are situated in Daewoong itself. We had pasta, salad, chicken and of course, the Korean way, free-flow of beer which we clearly abused and also since the management was going around to all the tables to mingle with the recipients and to drink with them. 

Made some new friends while having our meal and got to know them. Had a great time, took home a certificate and some money and then headed over to Daejeon to learn driving from Shengen!