[2024 CSAT] "This Year's Killer Questions Excluded, September Mock Test Tone Maintained"… Briefing by Chief Examiner

The 2024 College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) held on the 16th was announced by the CSAT Test Development Headquarters to have been based primarily on the regular curriculum. They explained that while the so-called 'killer questions,' which are extremely difficult, were definitely excluded, the test still maintained its discriminatory power.

Jeong Mun-seong, Chair of the CSAT Test Development Committee (Professor of Social Education at Gyeongin National University of Education), held a briefing on the CSAT test direction at the Government Sejong Complex on the morning of the same day, stating, "In accordance with the Ministry of Education's measures to reduce private education, the so-called killer questions were excluded, and the test was designed to secure discriminatory power using only content covered in the public education curriculum."

Jeong Mun-seong, Chair of the College Scholastic Ability Test Review Committee, is briefing on the basic direction of the 2024 College Scholastic Ability Test at the Ministry of Education, Government Complex Sejong on the 16th. Photo by Yonhap News

He continued, "The test faithfully reflected the content and level of the curriculum and was designed to measure the mathematical abilities necessary for university education," adding, "The EBS linkage rate is 50% based on the number of questions, and the test was designed to enhance the perceived linkage."

This year's CSAT started at 8:40 a.m. and continued until 5:45 p.m. The number of test takers was 504,588, nearly the same as last year. Among them, 326,646 were high school seniors, and 177,942 were repeaters or above (commonly called N-su students). The proportion of N-su students was 31.7%, the highest in 27 years since the 1996 CSAT (35.7%). It is estimated that nearly 90,000 of these are so-called "ban-su" students currently enrolled in university who are retaking the exam. Admission experts analyze that the number of ban-su students is the highest ever, and this is because many top-tier students chose to retake the exam aiming for medical school admission, anticipating a lower difficulty level due to the exclusion of killer questions.

As the proportion of high-ranking N-su students increased, there was also analysis suggesting that the overall difficulty of the CSAT was raised instead of including killer questions. Regarding this, Chair Jeong explained, "We analyzed the characteristics of all test takers, including N-su students, based on the June and September mock exams and took this into account in test development."

Regarding whether the extremely difficult killer questions were actually excluded, Chair Jeong said, "We did not include killer questions and maintained the test development policy of the September mock exam." Earlier, from this year, the Ministry of Education formed a separate 'High-Difficulty Question Review Team' apart from the test development and review committee to prevent test errors and check for killer question elements. If the review team suggested that a question contained killer question elements, the test development committee reflected this by modifying and supplementing the questions.

In this third year of the integration of humanities and sciences, there was controversy over advantages and disadvantages caused by score differences between elective subjects in the Korean language and mathematics sections. According to the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation, among this year's mathematics test takers, 49.2% chose 'Calculus,' which was more than 'Probability and Statistics' (4.1%) and 'Geometry' (46.8%). The proportion choosing Calculus increased by 5.5% compared to last year and is the highest since the integrated CSAT was introduced in 2021. Chair Jeong stated, "Advantages and disadvantages based on elective subjects inevitably occur in university applications," adding, "We analyzed the groups of test takers by elective subjects in the June and September mock exams and designed the test to minimize this issue as much as possible."

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