Last verified: 30 August 2026
There is no separate scholarship form at KAIST. You tick one box inside the admission application, under the Statement of Financial Resources section, and that box is the whole scholarship application. Nothing else is submitted, and nothing else is judged on its own.
That one design choice changes how you should think about this opportunity. At most universities, funding is a second contest you enter after you have already won the first one. Here, the admission decision and the money decision are the same decision. If KAIST decides to admit you through International Student Admission, the official page states that you become automatically entitled to the KAIST Scholarship. So every hour you were planning to spend polishing a scholarship essay is better spent on the admission application itself, because that is the only document in play.
Below is a plain reading of what the award pays, how the box works, who it is aimed at, and the single academic rule that decides whether you keep it after your first year.
What the KAIST Scholarship actually pays
The official scholarship page lists three subsidies, and it is worth reading them slowly because each one carries a different kind of value.
- Full tuition fee, given as a tuition exemption for 8 semesters
- Living expenses of 350,000 KRW per month
- Medical health insurance
Those three lines together remove the biggest fixed costs of studying in South Korea: the fee bill, the monthly cash floor, and the medical cover that international students are normally required to hold. That is a strong package by any measure.
Reading the tuition exemption honestly
The exemption is written as an exemption, not a reimbursement. In practice that distinction matters more than students expect. A reimbursement means you find the money first and get it back later, which quietly excludes anyone who cannot raise a full semester of fees up front. An exemption means the charge is lifted before it reaches you.
The figure attached to it is 8 semesters. A standard bachelor degree runs four academic years across two semesters each, so 8 semesters is the full expected length of the degree rather than a partial subsidy that runs out halfway.
What the page does not promise
This is where careful readers save themselves a difficult surprise, so read this section twice.
The scholarship page says nothing about airfare. There is no mention of a flight allowance, a settlement or arrival grant, a book allowance, or any support for the visa fees and document costs you will pay before you ever land in Korea. It also says nothing about accommodation being free or discounted.
None of that means those things are impossible. It means the official scholarship page does not commit to them, and you should plan your first three months of money as though they do not exist. Budget for the flight, the visa, document translation and courier costs, the deposit and first payments on wherever you live, and the gap between arriving and the first monthly payment reaching your account. If some of that turns out to be covered, you have a cushion. If it is not, you are still fine.
You will see this scholarship described as fully funded across the internet, and on the strength of tuition plus a monthly allowance plus insurance that description is fair. It is still not the same as every cost being handled for you.
The one box that turns an admission form into a scholarship application
Here is the mechanism, stated exactly as the official page states it.
- The application period is the same as the admission application period. There is no separate scholarship window.
- There is no separate process for applying for the scholarship.
- Inside the online application for admission, in the Statement of Financial Resources section, you check the box marked KAIST scholarship.
- All applications are thoroughly and equally reviewed during the admission process.
- Upon being selected for admission, you are automatically entitled to the KAIST Scholarship.
Read that list once more, because two practical consequences fall straight out of it.
First, the box is easy to miss. The Statement of Financial Resources is one of those administrative sections that applicants click through quickly while their attention is still on essays and transcripts. It sits among questions about how you intend to pay, which feels like paperwork rather than opportunity. Slow down there. An applicant who is admitted but never ticked the box has created a problem for themselves that no amount of good grades solves afterwards.
Second, the strength of your scholarship case is the strength of your admission case. There is nothing else to submit. So the real work is upstream: your academic record, your subject preparation in mathematics and science, your statement, your references, and whatever supporting evidence the admission round asks for. Treat the admission file as the funding file, because for you it is.
A small habit that costs nothing: before you press submit, take a screenshot of the completed Statement of Financial Resources section showing the ticked box. If a question ever arises about what you selected, you have it.
Also Check: Open Doors Russia Scholarship 2026/2027
Who this is written for
The eligibility line on the official page is short. The KAIST Scholarship is for applicants of International Student Admission.
That is a route, not a nationality list, and the distinction matters. It means the scholarship follows the admission track you apply through rather than being limited to a set of listed countries. If you are applying to KAIST as an international undergraduate through that admission route, the scholarship is on the table for you.
What the scholarship page does not do is restate the admission requirements themselves: the school qualifications, the documents, the language evidence, and the deadlines all live on the admission pages rather than the scholarship page. Do not treat the short eligibility line as the complete picture of what you must satisfy. Read the International Student Admission guidelines in full, and read them early enough that any missing document can still be requested from your school.
Practically, this scholarship suits you if:
- You are aiming at a science, engineering or technology undergraduate degree and want a research heavy environment
- You are applying as an international undergraduate rather than through the domestic Korean route
- You need the fee bill removed rather than reduced, because a partial award would not make the degree possible
- You can cover your own travel and arrival costs, or you have time to arrange them before the intake
The rule that decides whether you keep it
Winning this scholarship and holding on to it are two different achievements, and only one of them happens on application day.
The official requirement is that students must maintain a GPA over 2.7 out of 4.3 at KAIST after their freshman year.
Two details in that sentence deserve attention.
The scale is 4.3, not 4.0. Korean universities commonly use a 4.3 or 4.5 maximum, so a grade point average that looks modest against a 4.0 scale is being measured against a slightly higher ceiling here. Do not convert the threshold in your head using the scale you grew up with. Read your KAIST transcript on its own terms.
The rule applies after the freshman year. Your first year is the year in which the habits that produce that GPA are either built or not built. Freshman year at a demanding science and technology institute, in a new country, in a second language, is exactly when students underestimate the workload.
Things that protect the number, in the order they actually matter:
- Attend the first two weeks properly. Course expectations, assessment weightings and the pace of the syllabus are set there, and catching up on that context later is far harder than sitting through it.
- Ask for help early rather than at the point of crisis. Office hours, teaching assistants and study groups exist and are free.
- Watch the courses you assume are easy. Most damaged averages come from a subject the student stopped attending because it felt manageable.
- Track your own average every semester rather than waiting to be told. If you know your position, you can correct it while there are still semesters left to correct it in.
None of this is dramatic advice. It is simply that a funded degree is worth defending, and the defence is ordinary weekly discipline rather than heroics in the final month.
Also Check: Lester B. Pearson International Scholarship 2027 at the University of Toronto, Canada
Timing, and why there is no separate deadline to memorise
Because the scholarship rides on the admission application, the closing date you need is the admission closing date for the round you are applying to. The scholarship page gives no independent deadline of its own, and you should be suspicious of any website that invents one.
KAIST runs international undergraduate admission on a published schedule with its own rounds and document deadlines. Those dates change from cycle to cycle, so the only responsible instruction is this: open the official KAIST admissions website, find the current International Student Admission schedule, and work backwards from the closing date listed there.
Build your timeline backwards, not forwards:
- Confirm the closing date and the time zone it closes in
- Count back the time your school needs to issue transcripts and certificates, which is usually longer than students assume
- Count back the time referees need, and ask them before you need them
- Count back any translation or certification your documents require
- Leave the final week for review, not for hunting missing paperwork
Submitting three days early rather than three hours early is worth more than most people believe. Application portals are busiest and slowest at the close, and an upload failure at that moment is not something an admissions office can fix for you.
Also Check: Cyprus International University Scholarships 2026
A short warning worth taking seriously
Because this scholarship needs no separate application, it also needs no agent, no intermediary, and no paid service. Nobody should be charging you to tick a box on your behalf.
Treat as a warning sign anything that asks you to pay a fee to secure a scholarship, promises guaranteed admission or guaranteed funding, contacts you from an email address that is not a KAIST address, or asks for payment to a personal account. The genuine route runs through the official KAIST admissions website and the official application portal, and the contact details on the scholarship page are creative.adm@kaist.ac.kr and the admissions telephone lines listed there.
If you receive something that looks official but feels wrong, write to the admissions office directly using the address on the official site rather than replying to the message.
Official pages
Verify every figure yourself before you apply. Cycles change and pages get updated.
- KAIST Office of Admissions email: creative.adm@kaist.ac.kr
Frequently asked questions:
Can I hold the KAIST Scholarship at the same time as another scholarship?
The official scholarship page does not address this. It lists the subsidies and the GPA requirement, and says nothing about whether an outside award, a home government sponsorship or a private grant can be held alongside it. If you are also applying for another funding source, write to the admissions office before the deadline and ask directly, and keep their written answer. Do not assume either that stacking is allowed or that accepting one cancels the other.
What happens if my GPA slips below the threshold for one semester?
The page states the requirement to maintain a GPA over 2.7 out of 4.3 after freshman year, but it does not spell out the consequence of falling short: whether there is a warning period, whether the scholarship can be regained by recovering the average, or whether the loss applies immediately. That is a question worth asking your department office once you arrive, before you ever need the answer. Knowing the exact recovery rule in your first month is far more useful than learning it in a bad semester.
What if my degree takes longer than the funded period?
The tuition exemption is stated as 8 semesters. The page does not say what happens if a student needs a ninth semester because of a repeated course, a leave of absence, or a change of major. Since it is unstated rather than promised, plan on 8 semesters being the limit and treat anything beyond that as a cost you may have to carry. If you know in advance that your situation might extend the degree, raise it with the admissions office early.
Is this the same thing as the Korean Government Scholarship?
No. The KAIST Scholarship described here is an institutional award granted by KAIST through its own admission process. The Korean government runs its own separate scholarship programmes for international students, with their own applications, their own timelines and their own selection bodies. Applicants sometimes assume every route into Korea funnels through one national scheme, and then miss an institutional award sitting inside the university application they were already completing. Check both routes rather than treating them as one.
Is 350,000 KRW per month enough to live on?
Think of it as a floor rather than a full budget. It is a monthly living expenses subsidy, and the honest expectation is that it softens your cost of living rather than removing it. Food, transport, a phone, personal expenses and above all housing will vary with how and where you live. Before you accept a place, price out an actual month for yourself using current figures for Daejeon, compare that against the allowance, and be clear about where the difference comes from. Students who do this exercise before arrival almost never run into trouble. Students who assume the allowance covers everything sometimes do.
