Check whether your GPA likely meets the GKS academic baseline. This is an unofficial, browser-based pre-check based on published GKS guidelines. Your final result depends on the GKS committee.
This is an unofficial pre-check only. Your result is estimated based on the GKS conversion table and guidelines. Final eligibility and GPA conversion are determined by the GKS review process and the relevant authority.
The Global Korea Scholarship (GKS) GPA baseline can be met in any one of these ways: 80 or above on a 100-point scale, a class rank in the top 20%, or a CGPA of 2.64 on a 4.0 scale, 2.80 on 4.3, 2.91 on 4.5, or 3.23 on 5.0. StudySunbae checks the GPA figure only, not class rank, and gives you an unofficial browser-based read before you start the paperwork.
You choose your grading scale, enter your GPA, and (optionally) your country. We compare it with the GKS baseline for that scale — 2.64/4.0, 2.80/4.3, 2.91/4.5, 3.23/5.0, or 80 on a 100-point scale — entirely in your browser. A top-20% class rank is a separate GKS route that this tool does not check. Unofficial calculation only.
Source: Study in Korea (NIIED): GKS-G application guidelines, Appendix ALast verified:
The result above answers one question: whether your academic record clears the GKS baseline on its own. GKS reads that record next to several other gates, and any one of them can end an application that had a comfortable GPA behind it. None of them are calculated here — this tool reads a GPA and nothing else. Each page below carries the current requirement for one gate together with the Korean source it was read from, in roughly the order an application asks for them.
GKS asks for evidence of the language you will study in, and the level expected is not the same for every track or every stage of the programme. Arriving without a qualifying score does not exclude you — the scholarship builds in a Korean language year first — but the score you hold at application time still decides which universities and departments will look at you, and some departments set a bar above the scholarship's own. Read the requirement for your track before you build a shortlist around it.
GKS-U and GKS-G are separate competitions with separate guidelines, separate quotas and separate document sets, and the eligibility limits — the age ceiling among them — are written per track rather than once for the whole scholarship. Reading the wrong guideline is one of the cheapest ways to lose an application, because the mistake normally surfaces at the document stage, when the deadline is already close. Settle which one applies to you before anything else on this list.
The document set is where most of the calendar goes. Degree certificates and transcripts generally have to be apostilled or legalised at a consulate, and anything not in Korean or English has to be translated and certified — steps that run through offices in your own country and cannot be compressed once a deadline is fixed. Applicants who start this only after the guideline is published are usually behind already. The checklist sets out what each track asks for and which items depend on someone else's processing time.
GKS runs on an annual cycle with two application routes — through a Korean embassy, or directly through a university — that open at different times and are screened separately. The route you take changes your deadline, who reads your file first, and how early your paperwork has to be finished. Embassy deadlines also differ from country to country and are often the earlier of the two. The timeline page tracks the published dates for the current cycle and says plainly when a date has not been announced, instead of carrying last year's over.
GKS is funded, and the cash side is still worth knowing before you commit. Housing deposits are paid up front and returned at the end, arrival costs land before the first stipend does, and living costs differ sharply between Seoul and the rest of the country. Students on a D-2 visa may also work a limited number of hours once permission is granted, and the legal ceiling turns on a Korean-language standard rather than on the academic calendar. Both calculators run on figures you type, in your browser.
