A note to all incoming KGSP scholars

First of all, thank you for religiously visiting my site and for writing comments as well. However, nowadays, I have noticed that I am receiving a lot of questions that I, personally, couldn’t answer as well. Allow me to clarify a few things.

I am a KGSP  batch 2012

The reason why I am telling you this is that during my batch, we were following the old rules and requirements of KGSP. Before coming to Korea, the visa requirements for D2 (Student visa) didn’t ask for apostilles on our documents yet. The immigration made this rule effective last 2013. Our batch had the most difficult time preparing this document because we were in Korea already and there wasn’t much time as our language course ended just a few weeks before we start our graduate studies.

But how did I get through it? Mine was a special case. My graduate university appealed to the local immigration that we be exempted to present this document because it will take months before we could acquire one. Even our university had difficulties during this time because they, too, were uninformed of the new rule. Fortunately, we won the case.

Please do not think that this will happen to you too. Now that this rule has been established for more than a year already, expect for the immigration to be stricter with documents. So, as much as possible, prepare everything needed before coming here in Korea. Also, not all universities have friendly staffs. Just saying.

I am an MA student. 

Please refrain from asking questions about undergraduate or Phd scholarship; instead, please check the NIIED website.

I applied via (my home country) University. 

I know how complicated the application process of KGSP is. Although I passed already, I still have no idea how it happened. There is nothing much I can tell regarding applications via Embassy. If you applied via university, coordinate with that university. On the other hand, if you applied via Embassy, coordinate with that Embassy.

4. I am from the Philippines

Particularly, Mindanao. The hospitals in my area weren’t familiar with the TBPE drug test before. To compensate thereof, I took a drug test at a laboratory which was recommended by our local land transportation office (LTO) as every person who needed a driver’s license had to go through a drug test. Also, I sent them an email together with the result asking if it was sufficient. The international office of my graduate university sent us this email.

However, that is not the case now. Here is a screen capture on the official NIIED website. Please take note of the dates.

I am not an official of NIIED or KGSP

I am really sorry for not being able to respond to your questions instantly or for not being able to provide answers to some of it. This blog is a personal blog and my posts about KGSP are just my personal efforts to make things a tad easier for everyone.  If you have questions that needs answers asap, you may e-mail NIIED itself or post a question on the Q&A part of their website. Also, please please do more research before asking. Your problem isn’t new, some scholars have asked it before and I really believe their questions were answered already.  Maybe, the answers are right among the comments? Reading doesn’t hurt 😉

I hope that you will understand why I couldn’t attend to all of your questions. The Korean Government Scholarship Program has been very active in changing its rules for the past few months and although we are scholars under NIIED, we aren’t informed of such changes. Thus, this is almost everything I can share to everyone now.

Once again, thank you for visiting my site. I would really appreciate it if you guys will also read my other blog posts (not related to KGSP) and drop some comments. Good luck and see you somewhere here in Korea!

Sincerely,

PS. About the free books, I don’t have any books left 😉