Bypass Routes to College Admission, COVID-19 Impact... Growing Popularity of GED Exams

High School Equivalency Exam Graduates Taking CSAT Increase by 40% Over 5 Years
7 Out of 10 Seoul Test Takers Are 19 or Younger

A (17), who lives in Seoul, entered a prestigious foreign language high school last year but had difficulty adapting to school life. To make matters worse, family circumstances worsened, and as her grades fell behind, A decided to drop out at the end of last year, believing that it would be difficult to enter her desired university without good internal school grades. A passed the first high school equivalency exam this year with perfect scores in all subjects and is preparing for the 2024 academic year early admission.

The number of students who drop out of high school, take the equivalency exam, and prepare for college entrance is increasing. Students who chose homeschooling due to the COVID-19 pandemic are also obtaining regular school graduation qualifications through the equivalency exam.

On the 8th, the day the 2018 2nd Elementary, Middle, and High School Equivalency Exams were held, examinees taking the elementary school equivalency exam are checking the test site at Yonggang Middle School in Yongsan-gu, Seoul. Photo by Hyunmin Kim kimhyun81@

◆School-age population decreases, but equivalency exam numbers increase=Although the school-age population is declining, the number of youth taking the equivalency exam is actually rising. This is because more students who drop out of high school are taking the equivalency exam to gain an advantageous position in college admissions.

According to the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation, the number of applicants for the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) decreased from 590,000 in 2018 to 510,000 in the 2023 academic year, a drop of 80,000. However, during the same period, the number of applicants from equivalency exam graduates surged by nearly 40%, from 11,121 to 15,488. The increase became steeper starting from the 2020 academic year when COVID-19 began to spread. It is analyzed that some high school students aiming for their desired universities are obtaining graduation qualifications through the equivalency exam to either achieve better internal grades or focus on the CSAT.

Looking at the status of high school equivalency exam applicants in Seoul over the past three years (2020?2022), out of 23,024 applicants, more than half?11,700?were high school dropouts. This accounts for about 2.8% of the total, more than double the 1.2% recorded five years earlier in 2017.

◆Seven out of ten examinees are 19 or younger=Among applicants for the elementary, middle, and high school equivalency exams, the largest age group was youth aged 19 or younger. The number of 19-or-younger examinees for the elementary, middle, and high school equivalency exams in Seoul was 20,648, accounting for 66% of the total. Experts believe this trend will continue for the time being.

Cha Saebin, head of academic affairs at Sudohakwon, said, “More students are choosing to drop out voluntarily and take the equivalency exam to achieve better internal grades. As youth gain more freedom and more students struggle to adapt to school life and drop out, the number of students taking the equivalency exam as an alternative will continue to increase.”

Meanwhile, when classifying Seoul equivalency exam applicants by age over the past three years, out of a total of 31,295 applicants for elementary, middle, and high school equivalency exams combined, 2,540 (8.1%) were aged 60 or older. However, the proportion of these so-called lifelong learners tended to decrease as the school level increased.

In fact, during this period, lifelong learners had the highest proportion in the elementary equivalency exam, followed by middle school and then high school. Over the past three years, 459 lifelong learners applied for the elementary equivalency exam, accounting for 19.8% of the total. The middle school equivalency exam had 14.6%, and the high school equivalency exam had 5.3%. The pass rates for the equivalency exams are approximately 93% for elementary, 86.3% for middle, and 83.6% for high school, suggesting that lifelong learners’ application rates decrease as the learning burden increases.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.