New Freshman student at SUNY Korea’s Computer Science Department featu…
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New Freshman student at SUNY Korea’s Computer Science Department featured on Naeil Education
“Yearning for a more systematic curriculum after years of teaching myself, I found SUNY Korea to guide my Computer Science studies”
Kyung Kook Lee’s family had set his life for him: he would win the Korean Mathematical Olympiad in elementary school, attend a Science High School for the Talented, and enter the medical field to become a pharmacist. However, he fell in love with computer language from a young age and taught himself how to code for years. Although disappointed at first, his parents eventually decided it would be best for Kyung Kook to decide the field of study himself. As he continued with self-learning, he felt a great desire to officially learn computer science. He achieved his dream of wanting to study at an American university by entering the Stony Brook University (SBU) in SUNY Korea in September this year.
A fifth-grade kid who fell in love with coding after teaching himself
Because of the parents’ ambitious goals for the son, Kyung Kook had always returned home after 10PM everyday after Korean, English, math, science, violin, piano, and flute classes that he attended after school. He asked his mom to minimize these classes, which gave him more time to explore some of the computer languages, such as C-language, Java, and Python. “I became curious about the principles of score calculation while playing online games. I began to question the algorithm when I scored differently when punching with a fist and using a weapon,” he states. Kyung Kook was only allowed enroll himself in online classes and study groups because of his parents’ opposition for him to officially study computer science. However, this did not stop him as he continued studying computer science to deepen his knowledge.
Parents who wished their son to enter the medical field vs A kid who wishes to study computer science
Kyung Kook is a graduate from Songdo High School, a high school that highly emphasizes the study of the sciences. Although he was not part of the science-focus class, he was in a creative convergence class that puts math and science in the center of learning. From a young age, he was expected to inherit the pharmacy that his grandmother had been operating. He focused on studying math, chemistry, and life science to fulfill the expectations of his family members, but was not able to satisfy them with his relatively low grades for pharmacy school. No other subject was interesting to him as computer science. “I finally got permission to major in computer science as a senior in high school. So, I did not even apply to other Korean schools because my only goal was to attend SUNY Korea,” he remembers. “I believe SBU, SUNY Korea is the place where I can learn computer science best, and the Department of Computer Science will be a stepping stone to grow big in the future at the global level”
The path to study and work in the United States
Until the recent global pandemic, the original plan for Kyung Kook was to physically go study abroad in America, the center of IT industry. However, he thought it was better to stay in Korea for it offers the equivalent education as the home campus in New York and gives him the opportunity to study at the Stony Brook New York Campus for 2 semesters. Noting that graduates from SUNY Korea have received job offers from America in corporates such as Google and Amazon, and have gone to pursue further education by studying at prestigious graduate schools such as UC Berkeley and Columbia University, he decided SBU SUNY Korea would be the best choice for him. Reading about these alumni have given Kyung Kook a positive outlook to studying at SUNY Korea. He also found SUNY Korea advantageous over other universities for undergraduates also have the opportunity research with graduate students as well as receive education from professors who have served as Microsoft’s software engineer for over a decade, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology’s analyst for natural language and medical images, and Apple’s software developer.
An opportunity to pursue higher education
Because SUNY Korea reviews all documents holistically, Kyung Kook took this to his advantage. He states there wasn’t much extracurricular activities documented in his school records because the records primarily focus on activities that are centered around projects hosted by the school. Because Kyung Kook taught himself how to code, created his own computer coding club, and participated in drone competitions outside of school, none of these were recorded. However, he was able to freely discuss these activities in his personal essay in the SUNY Korea application. He also took the time to take an English proficiency test after the College Scholastic Ability Test and asked for a letter of recommendation from the teacher who knew him best. He took SUNY Korea’s holistically review process as an opportunity to show his passion towards computer science.
As Kyung Kook begins his undergrad studies as a Computer Science major this fall, he hopes to receive education from a well-established curriculum from a prestigious research university, Stony Brook University at SUNY Korea.