Stony Brook University SUNY Korea

SUNY Korea Career Development Center hosted an event named “Fall 2023 SBU Alumni Panel Event,” which was held through Zoom on Saturday, November 11 for SUNY Korea students. Four SUNY Korea SBU graduates participated in this event as speakers: Won Gu (AMS, PhD Candidate at Penn State University), Long Vu (BM, MS Candidate at Carnegie Mellon University), Sunghwan Kim (TSM, MS Candidate at Stanford University), and Anh Nguyen (MEC, PhD Candidate at Northwestern University). 

In their presentations, the four SUNY Korea SBU graduates advised on how to apply to graduate programs and graduate schools abroad based on their own experiences. What the four speakers emphasized in common were: a higher GPA, being proactive in one’s interested research field, and close relationships with faculty based on one’s passion. After the four speakers finished, there was a mentoring session for SBU students who participated in this event via Zoom breakout rooms. Thanks to this session, the participants could ask the graduates what they really wanted to ask, and get advice from them as real applicants rather than examiners.

One student who joined this panel event said, “It was a good opportunity for me to get advice from the students who graduated from SBU, SUNY Korea. In particular, I learned that graduate schools in the US prefer applicants who graduated from American colleges and universities rather than other countries. In my case, I became confident about utilizing my American school degree in order to enter a graduate program overseas.”

Written by Student Reporter, Hyeonha Hwang
(hyeonha.hwang@stonybrook.edu)