Scholarship Application Story Epilogue: The Dilemma and The Decision

The Dilemma

How would you feel if you received two prestigious scholarships simultaneously? You would be overjoyed, right? Yes, I was ecstatic, speechless, and couldn’t believe that I had received both the Global Korea Scholarship and Monbukagakusho Japan. However, the excitement only lasted for about three days before three months of confusion hit me hard. I never expected to experience something similar to what Maudy Ayunda (whom I admire, by the way, as Stanford and Harvard both accepted her) had gone through. But personally, I believe my situation was even more complicated – I had to choose between two countries, two different majors, two universities, and two scholarship programs. My tendency to overthink and my past experience of making a poor decision made it difficult for me to decide.

The decision-making process was complicated by other factors. To be honest, I had been dreaming of studying abroad through the GSEP Tokyo Tech since I was in the 12th grade. Japan was, and still is, my dream country to study in Asia (please note that this doesn’t mean I don’t want to study in Korea). Having lived in Tokyo for about a month, I missed the country, even until now. So why didn’t I simply choose Japan? It’s because my desire to study computer science remained strong, even though the transdisciplinary major that I would learn at Tokyo Tech was also very interesting. So, until now, there was a significant tie between the country and the major. Another factor was my financial situation. I had promised myself not to ask my parents for money from the process of applying to both scholarships until I go abroad to study. I knew that I needed money for both GKS and MEXT to survive for the first month in Korea or Japan, so I was researching and calculating everything. Now, there were three major problems: the country, the major, and money.

The Decision

Why did I choose KAIST in the end? Let’s break down the problems and explain the reasons.

1. Regarding the country, after leading a nomadic life and visiting several countries in Asia, I felt like they were all somewhat similar, even though they’re actually not. I realized that I am the kind of person who doesn’t really care about the place where I’m going to live. It’s not as simple as it sounds, but I felt that since my purpose of living in that country is to STUDY, the thing that we’re going to learn in college is more important than the country itself.

2. Regarding the major, I remembered that when I wrote my essay for the GSEP application, I still mentioned ‘computer stuff’ even though I knew that at Tokyo Tech I would major in transdisciplinary science and engineering (TSE). Both majors are very fascinating, but I felt that I was more into computer science. However, my overthinking made me constantly question whether I would be more successful if I majored in TSE, or if computer science was actually not for me. What I did was conduct more research and ask for the experiences of seniors who are studying at Tokyo Tech and KAIST. I discovered that at KAIST we don’t need to declare our major in the freshman year, and there’s a major similar to TSE too. I liked this kind of flexibility at KAIST and, fortunately, most of the courses in all of the departments are in English, so if I wanted to change my major, I could still do it if I chose KAIST. At KAIST, I could also learn courses from not just one major (we can do a double major or minor in another major). I was interested in this program, and if my brain could handle it, which I hope it can, I really wanted to learn both computer science and business and technology management.

3. Regarding money, after asking the seniors, I found out that to survive for the first month in Korea I would need about 2 – 4 million IDR, because GKS provides a settlement allowance too, and they said that the first monthly allowance would be transferred within 2 – 3 weeks after arriving in Korea, which turned out to be true. For Japan, the university itself suggested that I bring at least 150,000 JPY, which was too much for me to handle, but my senior suggested that I bring at least 60,000 JPY – 100,000 JPY (about 8 – 12 million IDR), which was also a lot for me. The school also told me that the first monthly stipend would be given approximately 1.5 months after arriving in Japan. Even though there were people (Thank you so much to Rudi and Hendra) who could help me with this money problem no matter whether I chose Japan or Korea, I didn’t want to be a significant burden for others. So, because of this factor, I chose the one which was ‘easier’ for me financially.

Actually, there were other reasons too, but those three that I mentioned above were very significant factors that led me to choose KAIST. In this post, I don’t want to compare one to another because the opportunities that I got were too good for me and successfully put me in a sweet-sour dilemma, plus it gave me a severe headache for two days in a row.

This dilemma not only taught me a lot about decision-making but also about the importance of respecting other people’s decisions because there will be reasons that we don’t know behind their decisions. We also don’t know how hard it is for someone to decide and how complicated it is. Therefore, never judge other people’s decisions if we know nothing!

This story is the end of the scholarship application story series. I hope we can learn something from these stories. See you in the next post.

200419 – Under the rain and wanting to smell the petrichor but too lazy to go outside~

-written on April 19, 2020-