"Skipping School, Taking GED - Most High School Dropouts in Gangnam Aim for University via Regular Admissions"

2.4 Out of 100 First-Year General High School Students Drop Out
Gangnam-Songpa Districts Have the Highest Number of Dropouts in Seoul

The number of students who chose to drop out after attending the first year of high school has recently been increasing.

On the 14th, Jongno Academy analyzed the publicly disclosed data from School Alimi and found that the number of students nationwide who dropped out after attending the first year of general high schools in 17 cities and provinces was 8,050 in the 2023 academic year, a 60.5% increase compared to 5,015 in the 2021 academic year two years earlier.

On the 3rd, the day of the 2021 College Scholastic Ability Test, a parent is looking at the school gate in front of the exam site set up at Gyeongbok High School in Jongno-gu, Seoul. Photo by Mun Ho-nam munonam@

The dropout rate for first-year high school students in the 2023 academic year was 2.40%, meaning that 2.4 out of every 100 first-year general high school students left school. The dropout rate for first-year students in 2021 was 1.46%.

Looking at all grades in high school, the number of students dropping out of general high schools in 17 cities and provinces nationwide has steadily increased every year over the past three years. The number of dropouts in 2023 was 15,520 (dropout rate 1.57%), 12,798 in 2022, and 9,504 in 2021.

Breaking down the number of dropouts by grade in the 2023 academic year, first-year students had the highest number at 8,050, followed by second-year students with 6,434 (dropout rate 2.05%), and third-year students with 1,036 (dropout rate 0.31%).

Among first-year high school students in Seoul, the district with the highest number of dropouts was Gangnam-gu, where 163 students (4.13%) decided to drop out in the 2023 academic year. The next highest was Songpa-gu with 143 students (3.70%). The number of dropouts in Gangnam-gu increased 1.72 times from 95 in 2021 to 163 in 2023.

"Burden of managing school grades... Choosing to enter university through regular admissions by only taking the CSAT"

On the 10th, examinees were entering the exam hall at Jangpyeong Middle School in Dongdaemun-gu, Seoul, the testing site for the middle school equivalency exam.
[Photo by Yonhap News]

The reason for the increase in dropouts appears to be that students who feel burdened by managing their school grades choose the regular admissions track, which relies solely on the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) scores for university entrance.

Jongno Academy stated, "In a situation where extracurricular areas such as self-introduction letters have been significantly reduced, if students fall short of their target university’s grade management in the first year, the number of students considering university entrance routes such as the qualification exam (GED) is expected to increase further."

As high school dropouts increase, the proportion of qualification exam (GED) passers at four-year universities nationwide and major universities in Seoul is also showing an upward trend.

Among new students at four-year universities nationwide in the 2023 academic year, 7,690 were qualification exam passers, which is 3,137 more than the 4,553 in the 2018 academic year five years ago.

Also, the number of qualification exam passers at the top 10 major universities such as Seoul National University, Yonsei University, and Korea University nearly doubled from 276 (0.7%) in 2018 to 524 (1.3%) in 2023. However, the number of qualification exam passers at Seoul National University increased from 13 in 2018 to 40 in 2022 but decreased to 28 in 2023 after the university began reflecting school grades in regular admissions.

According to the Ministry of Education, among the 508,030 CSAT applicants in the 2023 academic year, 15,488 were other examinees including qualification exam passers, accounting for 3.1% of all examinees. The CSAT registration rate of qualification exam examinees has been increasing annually: 1.9% in 2017, 2.3% in 2020, 2.77% in 2021, and 2.8% in 2022.

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