[Developer, Graduate School] 1. Choosing and Applying to a Graduate School

I am a 4-year web developer. I am also a developer with a common academic complex (?).

Perhaps because of this, graduate school was also an object of admiration for me during my school days. After graduating from a 3-year junior college and Korea National Open University and working, it gradually faded from my mind.

There are a few reasons why I've been thinking about graduate school but haven't been able to do it.

1. Graduate school tuition is expensive.
Yes, graduate school tuition is incredibly expensive.
It usually costs around 6 to 7 million won per semester, so even if you're working, you'd have to use most of your salary for tuition.

2. I don't have time.

Yes, I don't have time.
Since I have to work while attending school, even if I apply for evening classes, if I have to work overtime... it literally becomes the situation like the image above. For these two reasons, I've only been thinking about it without taking action until now.

However, I thought I would regret it if I just kept thinking about it, so after much deliberation, I decided to apply for graduate school.

Since I have to work while attending school, I looked for graduate schools focusing on the following aspects.

• Graduate schools with low tuition fees
• Graduate schools that offer weekend classes

As you can see, I focused on the two reasons why it was difficult for me to attend graduate school.

While searching for graduate schools, Seoul National University, SeoulTech, and Kookmin University were on my final list.

Seoul National University and SeoulTech are national universities, so their tuition fees are relatively low at around 2 to 3 million won. However, since they offer evening classes on weekdays, there was a risk that I might not be able to attend due to the distance. This was a concern.

Kookmin University has the advantage of offering weekend classes, but the tuition fee of around 7 million won was too burdensome for a junior developer. While conditions 1 and 2 might be what everyone wants, finding a graduate school that meets them both was difficult.

Since the majority of the applications were already closed, I wanted to aim for admission at the beginning of next year. However, since I had made up my mind, I wanted to challenge myself quickly. While searching here and there, I found the perfect graduate school for me.

It's Dankook University's Graduate School of Information Convergence Technology and Entrepreneurship.

All classes are held on weekends, so there is a disadvantage that Saturdays are unavailable. However, for me, who wanted to attend without any inconvenience rather than struggling to attend weekday classes, it was a good condition. Second, I was able to get a scholarship covering about 40% of the tuition fees through government support, so the tuition was within my expected range.

After the application and interview (non-face-to-face due to COVID-19), the results were announced today, two days later.

I finally passed the graduate school I wanted to attend for several years.

Balancing work and school will be challenging, but I have experience juggling work and school from my time at the Open University, so I believe I've had a certain level of training.

Due to COVID-19, orientations and classes are likely to be held online. I expect many developers are considering attending specialized graduate schools. I will share the information I've experienced through this graduate school challenge story so that it can be helpful to many others.