My KAIST experience

1. Land a couple of days before orientation. I landed on the morning of orientation day, jet-lagged, and missed the welcome events.
2. Don't forget the course registration lottery (12 August in 2025). I did, and only got the courses that weren't full.
3. Get all the forms done on day one, and bring Korean cash.
4. Apply for your residence card directly at the immigration office on campus. Mine took 2 to 3 weeks; friends who used the volunteer queue waited about a month.
5. Don't leave Korea before the residence card arrives, because the student visa is single entry.
6. Get a real Korean SIM with 30 to 50 GB and calls. I tried to live on eSIMs and regretted it.
7. Bring a second card like Revolut or Lunar. My Danish bank card was refused at most cash machines.
8. Get a bike. It turns a 10 minute walk into 2 minutes.
9. Apply for every grant you can. I applied to about 20 and got 4.
10. Book the airport bus home a day or two ahead. I didn't, and ended up paying 213,100 won (about 1,000 kr) for a taxi.

• Overall 10
• Academics 8
• Social life 10
• Dorm 7
• Food 10
• Admin and paperwork 2
• Value for money 10
• Safety* 10

* This can vary from person to person, but I'd generally say it's as safe as Denmark.

I'd go again in a heartbeat. The only low score is admin, because Korea loves paper forms. If you want a chill semester, I'd probably pick somewhere else, but it depends on how all-in you want to go.

Nov 2024

Advising session at DTU, then applied on Beyond Borders with Caltech first and KAIST second.

16 Dec 2024

Selected for KAIST.

Jan 2025

Sent most of my grant applications.

22 Mar 2025

Applied on KAIST's own portal.

May 2025

Courses pre-approved on merit.dtu.dk.

5 Jun 2025

Accepted by KAIST.

15 Jul 2025

Visa appointment in Hellerup. The visa came on 31 July.

12 Aug 2025

The course registration lottery, which I forgot.

29 Aug 2025

Landed in Korea, with orientation the same afternoon.

Sep to Dec

The semester, 1 September to 19 December.

23 Dec 2025

Home in Copenhagen.

19 Jan 2026

My transcript arrived.

Dates move a little every year, so check DTU's and KAIST's pages for yours.

I applied through Beyond Borders, DTU's exchange portal, with Caltech first and KAIST second. DTU picks only by GPA (grade point average), and Caltech's spot went to someone with a higher one, so I got KAIST. As I remember it, the lowest GPA that got into KAIST my year was about 9 to 9.5, but it changes every year, so rank two or three places you'd be happy with.

After DTU picked me, I applied on KAIST's own portal in March. For the course pre-approval I had an AI tool scan KAIST's course catalogue and then checked its picks myself, and I re-filed my pre-approval two or three times as courses changed. I took the Duolingo English test to be safe.

Five KAIST courses gave me 27.5 ECTS (European Credit Transfer System points), and a three-week course at DTU in January topped me up.

There's no tuition, and I kept my SU (the Danish state study grant), about 6,084 kr a month after tax.

I applied to about 20 grants and got 4: Erik Sommerfeldt (10,000 kr, taxed), Fabrikant Vilhelm Pedersen (7,000 kr), Otto Mønsted (10,000 kr) and Vera og Carl Johan Michaelsen (10,000 kr). I used AI to help with the letters, but I wrote the drafts myself.

My budget for the four months was about 63,000 kr including rent at home, and it was pretty accurate. I spent a bit more on food and a bit less on travel.

• Flights: about 6,000 kr return.
• Dorm: about 4,000 kr for the whole semester.
• Food: about 100 kr a day, because I eat a lot.
• Korean health insurance: 76,390 won a month, which I paid in cash at a convenience store.

I work with about 215 won to 1 krone, so 10,000 won is about 47 kr.

• The visa meant a trip to the Korean embassy in Hellerup. Book as soon as KAIST sends your Certificate of Admission. Mine came 16 days after the appointment.
• KAIST's health form needed proof of my MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccines and a tuberculosis blood test, about 600 kr.
• Passport photos came from the booth at Nørreport for about 50 kr.
• I flew Turkish Airlines via Istanbul for about 6,000 kr. When my team won DM i AI (the Danish AI championship) that summer, I moved my flight three days later to go to the award event, and the "flexible dates" add-on I'd paid for didn't cover it.
• I packed way too many clothes and ended up buying a new wardrobe in Korea.

I landed at Incheon at 8:40 on orientation day, took the airport bus to Daejeon (about three hours), got an Uber to campus, dropped my bags and went straight to orientation.

The first days were paperwork: lots of forms, the same details written again and again, all by hand. The residence card was the worst part. Instead of the volunteer hall, I went right past the café in the same building and up the stairs to the immigration office and applied directly, and my card was ready in 2 to 3 weeks.

For my ID photo, a photographer near the West Gate edited me until I looked like a K-pop star. Humbling, but fun.

I took five courses and passed all five. My tier list:

• SAI-Based Software Engineering (CS454). Evolving code with evolutionary algorithms. I came out with a whole new tool in my toolbox.
• AIntroduction to Social Computing (CS473). We built our own social app. Code mixed with sociology and internet culture.
• BDiffusion and Flow Models (CS492C). The maths and code behind image generators, with a lot of heavy maths.
• CMethods in Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS.30041). Niche and memory-heavy, but more interesting than I expected. The professor tried his best in English but would sometimes switch to Korean.
• FIntroduction to Database (CS360). Online with the webcam on, and SQL written on paper. Take databases at DTU instead.

I only got courses that weren't full, because I forgot the lottery. Lectures are 75 minutes and you're expected to study a lot on your own. The exams test memory, but grading is on a curve and everything comes back to DTU as "passed".

Once I was too direct with a TA (teaching assistant), and the professor told me to be more respectful. After that I had ChatGPT help me phrase my emails politely, and the professors turned out to be really flexible when asked nicely.

I lived in W6 (Mir Hall) in a double room with a roommate who took eight or nine courses to finish early and got really stressed, which is why I'd say don't overbook yourself.

There are no kitchens, so I ate out almost every day: rice bowls with meat at Kaimaru, and chicken breast with rice and tuna from the basement convenience store. Korean barbecue and a traditional Korean spa were the best things I did in Daejeon.

I got my bike by shouting after a guy who was cycling while pulling a second bike. I used the dorm gym and the big gym, played ultimate frisbee on the grass field, and went to the cheap campus sauna next to the pool.

We were about 200 exchange students. My buddy group was shy, so I found my own people: some guys I met in a queue on the first days, and a group of friends who took us hiking and to every party in Daejeon. Local students were friendly but rarely started a conversation.

In September about 20 of us went to Jeju. We hiked Hallasan barefoot in the rain until the park closed the mountain, and went bodyboarding on the south coast. For Halloween we all went to Seoul dressed as anime characters, and my fiancée and I went as Link and Zelda. In October I flew to Rome with my family for a week, and getting back into Korea was easy because I already had my residence card.

I hadn't booked a bus to the airport, everything was sold out before Christmas, and I ended up taking a 213,100 won Uber all the way to Incheon. Book the bus at the Daejeon Government Complex stop a day or two ahead.

Before leaving I filed the Campus Clearance Form and did the dorm checkout. The deposit only goes back to a Korean bank account, and I didn't have one, so a friend received it and sent it on to me. My transcript came by email in mid-January.