UPON ENTERING college, most students face an increasing need for personal laptops for various purposes - working on assignments, regularly checking school websites, and even taking notes during class. Owning a laptop also necessitates the owner to purchase a list of software in order to properly utilize his or her new gadget. However, neither are high performance laptops nor the most basic software even close to affordable for these young adults; though they constitute a big part of the primary expenses inevitable for a college freshman. Considering these burdens, Yonsei is equipped with services to improve your digital life as a Yonseian at more reasonable costs.

 

   Apple on Campus (AOC) is an exclusive discount program provided by the Apple Online Store, which offers Apple’s CPU products such as the Macbook or iMac at discounted prices to students and other faculty members of affiliated universities. Since 2013, Yonsei has been in affiliation with Apple for AOC. Currently, students and faculty of Yonsei can buy MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac mini, and Mac Pro at specially discounted prices, as well as get the product delivered free of charge.

   In order to buy your own laptop through AOC at Yonsei, you must first have a Yonsei webmail account in order for the Students’ Union to confirm that you are a Yonsei University student. If you don’t have one, you can create your account at mail.yonsei.ac.kr. Then, go online to the Students’ Union webpage (student.yonsei.ac.kr) and create an account; you will need to put in your Yonsei mail account during the process. The webpage has a notice on AOC that contains a link to the AOC Apple Store for Yonsei. The link is exclusively accessible to ones confirmed as Yonsei’s students or faculty. Thus, after your account has been confirmed by the Students’ Union and then by the AOC service server, you will be able to shop for your own personal computer via the link provided.

   Purchasing Apple computers through AOC is a privilege for students of affiliated universities because Apple Store provides Mac products at prices lower than the education pricing that it offers to college students and faculty of all schools. Kim Do-hee (Soph., Dept. of Business Admin.) has bought a 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display for approximately 220,000 cheaper than the original price, while the education pricing of the same product is only 120,000 cheaper than the original price. Kim said, “It was very convenient that I could get a greater discount simply with my name, department, and student ID number. It was a good opportunity to buy Apple products at more affordable prices.”

 

   Yonsei also provides various software for students and faculty through its main website. It is actually already widespread that Yonseians can download Microsoft Office programs and Hangeul through the Yonsei website, which are the most used document programs by students. However, other than these programs, there are also other free software available including virus vaccines, graphic editing programs and many more.

   Yonseians who have downloaded such programs via the Yonsei website expressed their satisfaction with this free access to a variety of useful software. Mun Gyu-seong (Soph., Dept. of Sociology), who has downloaded Adobe Illustrator through the Yonsei website mentioned “it seems favorable for students that they can utilize the services free of charge which originally require payment.” Here is a tip for those who plan on taking advantage of this software rental service: be careful not to miss the serial numbers that appear while downloading software, which is necessary when certifying the product later. For more specific information on available software included in the list, visit helpdesk3.yonsei.ac.kr and login.

 

   S-membership is a discount service through which Yonseians are guaranteed discounts for specific products at restaurants, coffee shops, movie theaters, and many more. It is a service that launched with the former 50th Students’ Union, Focus On Story. The 52nd Students’ Union Synergy is keeping the service in continuation this year with S-membership contract renewals as well as newly signed contracts.

   Other than such discounts mentioned above, S-membership also provides discounts for education. SBS Academy Computer Arts Institute offers cheaper registration fees for both offline and online courses. The courses include web programming, computer graphics, motion graphics, smartphone application development, and so forth. When registering for a single offline course with your student ID, you can receive a 10% discount, whereas when registering for multiple offline courses you can receive a higher discount rate of 20 to 25%. Online courses can also be registered with discounted fees.

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