[2024 Early Admission Special] Maximum Graduates, Minimum Current Students... Careful Planning Needed for Early Admission Strategies Including Minimum CSAT Standards

Application Submission Starts from the 11th
79% of All Universities Select Early Admission
Current Students Must Develop Focused Early Admission Strategies

From the 11th, the application period for the 2024 academic year early admission will begin. This year, as the number of graduate applicants is expected to increase and the number of current students to decrease, it seems important to establish tailored strategies for graduates and current students.

According to the Korea Council for University Education on the 4th, 196 universities nationwide will select 272,032 students through early admission, accounting for 79% of the total recruitment of 344,296. Although this is 410 fewer than last year (272,442), the proportion of early admission among the total recruitment increased by 1 percentage point.

[Image source=Yonhap News]

By selection type, 154,121 students (44.8%) will be selected through the student record-based screening, 79,358 students (23%) through comprehensive student record screening, 11,214 students (3.3%) through essay-based screening, 22,539 students (6.5%) through practical/performance-based screening, and 4,800 students (1.4%) through other methods.

Due to the decline in the school-age population, universities have begun their own restructuring, resulting in a decrease in the total recruitment number. This is a reduction of 4,828 compared to last year. Accordingly, the number of students recruited through early student record-based screening and regular admission based on the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) has generally decreased.

In particular, this year, the proportion of graduates among CSAT applicants is expected to reach the highest level in 28 years, while the number of high school seniors is expected to be at an all-time low. This is analyzed to be due to predictions that killer questions will be excluded and the test difficulty will be lowered starting from this year's CSAT. Therefore, it is advantageous for current students to focus on early admission.

Applicants should check the different start and end dates for early admission applications at each university. Most universities recruit from the 11th to the 15th, but Seoul National University, Korea University (Seoul), Kyung Hee University, and Kongju National University of Education close applications from the 11th to the 13th. It is also necessary to assess the possibility of early admission applications through student records and CSAT mock test scores. Since rapid changes in CSAT difficulty, such as the exclusion of killer questions, are expected, applicants should also pay attention to whether they meet the minimum CSAT score requirements.

Nam Yungon, head of the MegaStudy Admission Strategy Research Institute, advised, "The number of high school seniors this year is the lowest ever, but the number of repeaters is increasing, making it more difficult to meet the minimum CSAT score requirements. It is important to carefully check and analyze the competition rates until the very end."

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