South Korea's college entrance exam could be the hardest in 13 years

For the first time in 13 years, South Korea's college entrance exam may not produce a perfect score because the questions are too difficult.

More than a week after the Suneung - the university entrance exam in Korea, the controversy surrounding the difficulty of the exam has not yet cooled down.

On November 21, the National Association of College and Career Counselors, a group of experienced college counselors, said that this may be the first time in 13 years that South Korea has not recorded any candidates achieving a perfect score. The reason is that the 5 high-level application questions were as difficult as the "killer questions" in previous years' exams.

Every year, news of candidates achieving perfect scores would quickly spread after they graded themselves, but this year was not the case.

Megastudy, one of South Korea's largest tutoring centers, graded about 120,000 of its students but found no one with a perfect score.

This year’s Suneung scores will be released on December 8. Before then, candidates can self-grade their papers, based on the answer keys provided by the Korea Institute of Curriculum and Evaluation.

A student receives his Suneung exam results at Kyungbock High School in Seoul, December 2022. Photo: Yonhap — A student receives his Suneung exam results at Kyungbock High School in Seoul, December 2022. Photo: *Yonhap*

This is the first year that the "killer questions" that are difficult and use knowledge outside of the textbook in the Korean university entrance exam have been eliminated, in order to reduce pressure on candidates. This has led many students to expect the exam to be easier. However, in reality, the difficulty of the exam is the same as in previous years.

Immediately after the exam, the national educational television channel EBS surveyed the candidates. Of the more than 2,700 participants, nearly 86% said the exam was difficult. Specifically, in each subject, 64.5% of candidates rated the Korean test as "very difficult", while the rate for Math and English was more than 30%.

Lim Seong-ho, director of Jongno Academy, one of the largest private educational institutions in South Korea, said that although the test content is only within the curriculum, the questions are becoming more and more complicated.

"Students need to solve a math problem in 2-3 minutes, but teachers at the exam preparation center say it's impossible," he said.

According to the Korean Ministry of Education, this year's Suneung received a total of 288 complaints about problems with the test, 375 fewer than last year. The Korean test received the most complaints with 69 votes.

In addition, question 33 of the English test received 13 negative comments. This question asked candidates to choose an answer to fill in the blank, the missing part of the text was knowledge about psychology. Many candidates were confused because the question did not provide enough context to solve the problem. Jung Seung-ick, an English teacher at EBS, agreed with the candidates in a video solving this subject.

Question 22 in the Math exam also made many candidates stumped because it required applying too much knowledge to come up with the answer. The question required candidates to find a graph that satisfied the given conditions, by examining the sign of the differential coefficient, then calculating the value of the function. A Math teacher at a test preparation center spent more than 20 minutes to solve this problem.

The Suneung is one of the most rigorous college entrance exams in the world. In 8 hours, candidates must take many knowledge tests such as Korean, Math, English, Korean history, a second foreign language or Chinese characters.

Phuong Anh (According to Korea Herald )

Source link