Guys, plz write your comments, it's a good topic for everyone! where would you go if accepted to both? korea or singapore?

it really depends on what you want to do. IF you are planning to live in Korea, u should go to SNU or YS. plus Non of those schools are well-known outside of Korea, so if you want to work outside of Korea, u should go to NUS.

SNU and YS do not need GMAT and almost anyone can get in. the quality of the MBA students may be poor.

In actuality, Yonsei and SNU are well known outside of the US. It's just a mere fact that its in Korea.

To the Challenger, if your still deciding on what school to apply to, I'd like to recommend YS. The campus is a lot bigger, and its not smack in the middle of nowhere, like SNU is. The international crowd at YS is also a lot bigger.

Take it from me, I loved the environment at YS, and there's just so much more you can gain from there. Especially, if you're looking at international business. The networking gained from the college itself, and even the I-house can be of great use in the future!

I was looking through Yonsei's wikipedia page and found this:

As of 2009, a student does not have to be an active Christian to be admitted to Yonsei University. However, he or she is required to attend weekly chapel hours which consist of sermons and public prayers, similar to other mission schools in South Korea such as Ewha Woman's University, Seoul Women's University, Soongsil University, and Hannam University. As of 2004, a student of Yonsei University is required to attend weekly chapel hours for 4 semesters and take one Christianity-related class in order to graduate. These requirements are enforced strictly by thorough attendance checks. A student in Soongsil University sued the university for the limitation of his freedom of religion in 1995 when he could not obtain his B.A. because he did not attend chapel hours, but the Korean court ruled in favor of the school, stating that the school regulation had not limited students' freedom of religion.

I can see why people prefer SNU (no such requirements). As someone who's not Christian at all, these policies could be quite annoying. Does anyone know if these policies extend to the Global MBA program?

These policies are not extended to the Global MBA program, at least at Yonsei University. The chapel is available for Christian students, however, it is not mandatory and religion is not taken into consideration during the admissions process.

Also, on a side note, people don't prefer SNU because of religious requirements. A part of the preference comes because SNU is a public school, while Yonsei and Korea are private schools.

When it comes to the Global MBA program Yonsei is a school with a more diverse international population. As an expat myself living in Korea, Shinchon is an extremely comfortable place to be, especially because it has a strong range of nationalities that normally come from the students of Yonsei.

Yonsei's storing international program is seemingly the major cause of this, and something that should definitely be considered when making your decision on what university you'd like to attend.

What I meant is that, although it is no longer mandatory to be a Chrstian, pre-2009 you had to be an active Christian of some sort to even gain entry into Yonsei (according to wikipedia at least, maybe wikipedia is wrong, but i'm basing my argument on the assumption that it's not wrong). Automatically this gives Yonsei a disadvantage because you are cancelling 75% of the talent pool for something arbitrary that does not affect who they will become or how talented they are. Given Yonsei's reputation as being Korea's oldest university, they could easily have been #1 today.

Essentially, in the past 100 years, by not allowing 75% of the population a chance by virtue of religion, by function of this restriction, you are not allowing in the highly talented individuals of this class as well (obviously a Buddhist with an IQ of 200 back in the 70s couldn't gain admissions just because he was Buddhist, not because he lacked any talent or smarts). Meaning the amount of amazing students, professors, and alumni produced by Yonsei goes down by that same amount. And this overall affects the reputation. SNU then takes advantage of this and is now #1. Usually the oldest school with the oldest traditions have the biggest advantage for prestige, but what I meant is in this situation, the oldest school has prevented itself from being #1 and settled with #2.

In recent years Yonsei seems to have been changing things up a bit. Starting a new international campus etc... But i really wonder if this can bring things back to Yonsei's favour. SNU has had such a strong advantage and has the strongest alumni base on average, and the smartest students continue to go to SNU because they want to be able to socialize with the smartest students and be respected by SNU's alumni (who now are undoubtedly the dominant in Korea). This is what i'm talking about.

It's only a theory though of course, and i'm not Korean, so there might be other reasons why SNU is tops too. Like you said, being a public school might give it an advantage too. Tuition costs etc... But I don't think you can deny that automatically cancelling out 75% of the talent pool for a century contributed heavily to it's non - #1 status. Nothing wrong with being #2-3, that's pretty damn good actually, but i'm just offering my theory on why it's not #1.

These policies are not extended to the Global MBA program, at least at Yonsei University. The chapel is available for Christian students, however, it is not mandatory and religion is not taken into consideration during the admissions process.

Thanks for the info. This makes things a lot more simple.

In relation to the Wikipedia information on "students required to be Christian in order to be admitted to Yonsei prior to 2009", I feel that I should clarify this fact. The information on Wikipedia is not correct. In order to be admitted to Yonsei, religion was not considered.

In relation to the Wikipedia information on "students required to be Christian in order to be admitted to Yonsei prior to 2009", I feel that I should clarify this fact. The information on Wikipedia is not correct. In order to be admitted to Yonsei, religion was not considered.

You should edit it then (it's wikipedia, you can do that). It kind of makes Yonsei seem discriminatory. This would be unfair if this information is untrue.

What's the reason for SNU being top then? In Japan, for example, Keio is the oldest in Japan and actually for a very long time was the most prestigious. This dominanec began to waver when the government started up Todai. Although Keio was originally at the top, the government did not fully give Keio its support. The government discriminated applicants based on the school they went to and gave heavy preference towards the Imperial universities, especially Todai. Obviously within a couple decades, the vast majority of top positions in Japan went to Todai students for this reason. So even though the top students may have went to Keio early on, they couldn't get the top positions. Essentially, this lead to Todai graduates dominating the elite of Japan. The top students, the smartest of the smart in Japan, don't take long to figure this out. Soon the top students began to heavily favour Todai too. They began applying to Todai, and now the top talent are all at Todai. With the top students now fully choosing Todai, to this day Todai has an iron grip on Japan. This is true even if there is no longer unwritten/implicit rules to hire mainly Todai students. Today, even with no official preference by the government, the position that Todai has in Japanese society is so dominant that all the talent go there now anyway.

Anyway, that is how a Japanese student explained Todai's present dominance to me.

Why then is SNU Korea's top school? How did Yonsei manage to lose out to a school that has strong Japanese roots? Especially considering that Yonsei had the heavy advantage of being Korea's oldest school + being homegrown?