In this blog post, I’ll use a sample personal statement to introduce my academic efforts and learning experiences during high school, my school activities and examples of consideration and cooperation, as well as my motivation for applying to the Department of Korean History and my career exploration experiences.
Academic Efforts and Learning Experiences
“Vivid Anecdotes: Studying History with Mind Maps.” In high school, I chose to study two history courses as part of my social studies curriculum. I did this because I’ve always enjoyed history and because I’m confident in my ability to memorize details. I first developed a passion for Korean history while taking it as a required course during my freshman year. The Korean history teacher who taught the freshman class at my school was an elderly man; born shortly after the Korean War, he had personally experienced a significant chapter of our history. As a result, he had personally experienced and remembered most of what was written in the modern and contemporary history section of the Korean history textbook, and he shared many vivid personal accounts with us.
Everything he told us left a deep impression on me, so I even recorded his lectures to listen to them again while studying. Among these, the part that stands out most in my memory is the section on pro-democracy protests. As an adult, my teacher had personally participated in popular protests for democracy—such as the April Revolution and the June Struggle—and remembered every incident that occurred during those events. As I listened to the exact years, dates, and the sequence of events as reported in actual newspapers, I was able to confirm where the content aligned with the textbook and where it differed. In this way, through storytelling, I was able to learn the textbook material without having to memorize it separately.
In addition to learning through storytelling, memorization was essential for studying history. In particular, the ancient history section—spanning from the Three Kingdoms Period to the Joseon Dynasty—had few connections to the present, making it difficult to memorize events by year. However, since I was confident in my ability to memorize, I used mind maps to draw pictures and commit the information to memory rather than simply repeating each item over and over. When it came to the history of the Korean dynasties, trying to unconditionally link a king’s name to his achievements often led to confusion. So, by drawing mind maps—sketching the king’s face and branching out to illustrate each achievement one by one next to it—I was able to memorize the material effectively. Later, when recalling what I had memorized, I would visualize the drawing itself in my mind, which ensured there were no errors in my recall, making it an excellent study method.
School Activities and What I Learned
“I was active in the History Club’s Cafe Management Team.” Since I love history, I joined the club because I wanted to learn more about it—a subject I’m passionate about. The History Club was renowned for being the most academically rigorous club on campus and for its well-organized activities. So, after joining the club, I applied to the Cafe Management Team because I wanted to manage the bulletin board by uploading history-related materials to the online community.
Once I joined the cafe management team, my main responsibility was documenting our activities alongside my peers. This involved recording and uploading speeches given by other members or organizing files of book reviews they wrote. Organizing these materials made it easier to inform incoming members the following year about how club activities had been conducted in the past. As for the speeches, I helped members improve their presentation skills by allowing them to review their own presentation videos.
In addition to my work on the cafe management team, I participated in activities such as “Understanding Our History,” “5-Minute History Speeches,” and writing book reviews on history. For “Understanding Our History,” every time we gathered in the club room each week, we prepared and presented historical facts not found in textbooks, as well as content from textbooks that was not widely known. I loved this time the most—it was the activity that piqued my curiosity the most, and I’d lose track of time listening to what my friends had prepared. I also summarized these topics and posted the day’s presentation on the club forum so that members who couldn’t attend could study the material as well.
For the “5-Minute History Speech” activity, we built upon the content presented in the “Understanding Our History” segment by adding our own perspectives to share our personal opinions. Rather than simply stating subjective opinions, we prepared and delivered our arguments logically with supporting evidence, aiming to persuade our audience. Listeners could ask questions as needed, and presenters could pose questions in turn, allowing everyone to develop their own thinking. Frequently giving presentations through these speech activities proved beneficial, as it allowed us to apply our improved skills to presentation assignments in other subjects.
The history book review activity involved reading historical texts related to actual events—such as the ‘Annals of the Joseon Dynasty’, ‘Hanjungnok’, and ‘Nanjung Ilgi’—and writing reviews that we then passed around to read. Each week, we selected the same book to read, and by exchanging and reading the essays we had written with the group member sitting next to us, we created a space to share our different perspectives. While writing book reviews for general books usually leads me to focus on producing model answers with the expectation of being evaluated by the teacher, this activity was a bit different. Knowing that another classmate would be reading my essay, I found myself writing more persuasively and using many examples based on actual facts to elicit empathy. In order to find examples, I naturally read the book more carefully; rather than skimming, I read it thoroughly, which allowed me to study history in greater depth.
Examples of Consideration and Cooperation
“Helping a classmate with a disability during group activities.” When I was a freshman in high school, there was a classmate in our class named ○○○ who had a disability. Although ○○○ had a disability, in every other respect he was just like the rest of us, so there was no visible difference. However, he had a visual impairment—he was blind in one eye and had to rely on only one eye for daily life. Out of consideration for ○○○, our class decided to always seat him in the very front row, and we made sure to exempt him from duties like class monitor duties or cleaning that required a lot of going up and down stairs. Despite this, ○○○ wanted to participate in cleaning just like the other students; he was that kind of diligent and kind-hearted friend.
Once, during a physical education class, we had a badminton lesson. Since there were as many as 40 students in the class, we were divided into five groups for the badminton performance assessment. Each group had eight students, and we were paired up in twos to form four pairs. Each pair took the same event, but no two students within the same group took the same event. The badminton assessment consisted of four events: serving, receiving, hitting the shuttlecock inside the lines, and smashing. I was assigned to the receiving event, and my partner was ○○○.
While ○○○ had no major trouble with serving or smashing, he often missed the shuttlecock during the receiving event due to a lack of directional sense and quick reflexes. Since the physical education teacher was new, he didn’t take ○○○’s situation into account, so I decided to help ○○○ so that his performance assessment grade wouldn’t suffer due to his difficulties. I worked with ○○○ to practice our movement patterns for returning shots, and I guided him to move strictly according to those patterns so he wouldn’t miss any shots. Although the assignment was originally designed for us to compete naturally and pass the ball to each other, I decided it would be better for us to prepare by cooperating, given that ○○○ is a classmate who needs special consideration. Through this planned yet natural collaboration, we were able to earn good grades on the performance assessment, and I was grateful that other classmates who knew the situation showed consideration by turning a blind eye.
Motivation for Applying to My Major and Career Exploration Experiences
“As a history enthusiast, I aim to become a museum curator!” My motivation for applying to the Department of Korean History at Kookmin University through the Comprehensive Student Record Admissions Track is that I want to fully unleash my curiosity as a history enthusiast. I loved history so much in high school that I took all three courses—Korean History, East Asian History, and World History—and even chose two of them to focus on for the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT).
In addition to studying from textbooks, I joined a history club and was active in it; I also managed an online community and organized related materials. Through this online community, I posted articles covering stories beyond the textbooks—aimed at helping members understand our history accurately—as well as articles on recently updated historical facts, ensuring my fellow members had access to this information.
I enjoyed building my historical knowledge through both academic study and various activities, and it was this passion that led me to dream of becoming a museum curator. I understand that museum curators manage and classify historical records, conduct research, and, increasingly these days, plan exhibitions. I decided on this career path because I felt that these activities—managing and classifying materials, as well as planning and research—would align well with my aptitude and interests. I learned about these aspects through my club activities, where I met and interviewed practicing curators; during these interviews, I also visited the National Museum of Korea for a field trip. In this way, I built the foundational skills required for a curator through various hands-on experiences related to history.
Furthermore, through my club activities, I was able to read a wide range of historical books across various fields. The historical books that left the deepest impression on me were Chinese historical texts such as ‘Romance of the Three Kingdoms’ and ‘The Chronicles of the Chu and Han Dynasties’, as well as Korean historical texts such as the ‘Annals of the Joseon Dynasty’ and ‘History of Goryeo’. I particularly enjoyed reading authentic historical texts multiple times, striving to develop a sound understanding of history through this process. After reading these authentic historical texts, I gained humanistic insight by reading historical literature—such as ‘Hanjungnok’—through my club activities. Through these diverse reading activities, I was able to gain indirect historical experience and develop the foundational academic skills necessary to study in the Department of History.
