The start of our academic exchange term was an EPIC failure. My very first lecture of a level 700 course: the highest level graduate course offered here. Wow! The professor was very nice to us and recommended us to drop the course as we had no pre-requisite.
Hours of scrubbing through POSTECH’s blackboard and Pre-Approved list before this exchange was nearly a waste of time. Not understanding the courses’ indexing format is a HUGE mistake on our part!
One pre-approved course for Microelectronics turned out to be a more advance course of Chemistry II!!! Seriously seniors, why???
Not that I did not request for approval for a weird course, hehe. EECE490 Embedded SOC is totally not DSL. DSL teaches how to write HDL, SOC assumes that you already have the pre-requisite. So those going to POSTECH in the future, don’t choose this course unless you really wanted to.
So to reduce the pain for you, here’s the break-down of the courses.
“Course No.” contains alpha and numerics.
Alpha section tells you which department the course is parked under. Eg. EECE means Electrical & Electronics Department. Sorry guys, no pillars and tracks here.
The first number in “Course No.’ is the most important number you need to know. It is the level of difficulty or simply the year of education.
1xx to 4xx are for undergraduate; undergrad year 1 to 4 respectively.
5xx to 7xx are for graduate studies. So yup, level 700 course is CRAZY! But still not over 900(0). Haha, so lame.
The numbers are recommended study years only, simply to hint the trouble you are getting into. Graduate students are welcomed to take undergrad courses, and it is on you to ensure proper mapping back to SUTD, and vice-versa. The only catch is taking higher level courses, you may not have the pre-requisite for them, and struggle through the courses. Like I did! Yup, this was not written in week 1. Don’t arrest me please.
Like everything, there is always exceptions. We took a level 700 HASS course, but no worries here. This course is highly recommended by our seniors, and the professor is super nice and the course is interesting without the extra workload 🙂 So yup, take this course and you wont regret. And don’t say bojio., it CITE700b Engineering Ethics and Communications.
Please don’t ask me what is the last alphabet “b”, I also dunno. CITE stands for the department of Creative IT Engineering.
Another catch is the language (see the picture above) are for reference only. 2 of us took EECE211 Semiconductor Electronics I, and it say KO under language. Oh no! How??? I don’t understand korean language. Don’t worry, in this case, it means that the lectures are taught in korean, but lecture slides, textbook used and most importantly EXAMS are in english. After approaching the professor to see if we can take the course since its inside the Pre-Approved List, and we were desperate at that time to find a course, he explained to us nicely that he teaches in korean as the local students better understand the subject that way. He was extremely nice to us, and welcomed us to the class, giving us extra weekly consultation sessions in english. So that worked out well.
However, there are certain classes that puts EN under their course language, and some of them are taught exclusively in korean. So beware, and don’t be sad if thats the case. Just suck your thumb like a baby and find another course 🙁
So yup, before embarking on exchange to this marvelous university, please do your homework. Pre-Approved List is for your viewing pleasure only, at the very least go to POSTECH learning portal and research.
(Change the page to english. Under “Learning Guide” on the top banner, click on “Course” in the left bar. XXXX-2 semester is your exchange sem, where XXXX is the year of your exchange)
Finally here’s a sneak peak at my timetable.
Yup Monday to Thursday only. I’m free to travel from Thursday afternoon!!!
Just a hint, for most courses it’s either a Monday + Wednesday or Tuesday + Thursday lesson schedule. So yup, if you squeeze all lessons on Monday + Wednesday, and its possible, you can start flying from Wednesday night!!!
So good luck and have fun if you are coming to POSTECH for exchange!!! For those who are not, don’t be jealous about POSTECH’s fantastic timetable, it’s nothing amazing. But you may cry. Just kidding.
Tanrong
aka Haha Noob Noob 的 你
(please don’t ask why :))
