CSAT 'September Mock Test' to be Held on September 6... Difficulty May Decrease Following Presidential Rebuke

Application Deadline Until the 6th of Next Month
Maintaining Korean, Math, Common + Elective Subjects

The September mock exam conducted by the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE) in preparation for the 2024 College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) will be held on September 6. There is significant interest in whether the difficulty level will change, alongside concerns about the increasing proportion of graduates and the intensifying 'science track concentration.'

KICE, which oversees the CSAT question setting, announced on the 19th that applications for the 2024 September mock exam will be accepted from August 26 to September 6.

On the 1st, repeat test takers are taking the mock exam at Jongno Academy Gangbuk Main Branch in Mapo-gu, Seoul, where the 2022 College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) September mock evaluation is being conducted. Photo by Jang Jin-hyung aymsdream@

KICE conducts mock exams every June and September to provide students with an opportunity to assess their academic level and to understand the academic ability of test-takers in order to maintain an appropriate difficulty level for the actual CSAT.

The test areas for this September mock exam are the same as the CSAT: Korean, Mathematics, English, Korean History, Inquiry (Social Studies, Science, Vocational Education), and Second Foreign Language/Chinese Characters.

All students must take the Korean History section, while the other sections are optional.

As in the previous year, Korean and Mathematics maintain the 'common subject + elective subject' structure. Students take the common subject, then choose one from ▲ Speech and Writing or ▲ Language and Media for Korean, and one from ▲ Probability and Statistics, ▲ Calculus, or ▲ Geometry for Mathematics.

In the Social Studies and Science inquiry sections, students can select up to two subjects from 17 available subjects without distinction between social studies and science. English, Korean History, and Second Foreign Language/Chinese Characters are graded on an absolute evaluation basis.

The linkage rate between EBS CSAT textbooks and lectures and the mock exam questions will be maintained at about 50% (indirect linkage) based on the number of questions.

Currently enrolled students apply through their schools, graduates can apply through their former high schools or academies as they wish, and examinees without a school of origin, such as those who passed the qualification exam, can apply at one of the 84 education offices in their residential test districts or at eligible academies.

Students who are COVID-19 positive or have a fever on the exam day and cannot attend can take the exam separately on-site or online.

Score reports can be collected at the place where the application was submitted on October 5.

Meanwhile, attention is focused on whether the difficulty level will decrease following President Yoon Seok-yeol’s remarks about the CSAT on the 15th.

Regarding the president’s criticism that some CSAT questions are so difficult that they cannot be considered within the curriculum and that they encourage private education, the Presidential Office and Ministry of Education explained that these remarks were not guidelines to make the CSAT easier but rather an emphasis on the principle that questions should be set within the curriculum.

However, with the dismissal of the Ministry of Education’s college admissions director and an audit announced for the question-setting institution KICE, there is speculation that the exam difficulty may be lower than in June.

KICE also stated that considering the academic disruptions students faced during the COVID-19 period, they plan to make the charts, illustrations, and passages used in EBS-linked questions more similar to the textbooks to enhance students’ perception of linkage.

Lim Seong-ho, CEO of Jongro Academy, said, "Since high-difficulty questions seem to be an issue these days, this is a strong message to make the CSAT easier," adding, "The discriminative power in Korean and Mathematics is likely to decrease significantly."

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