"'Killer Questions' Removed, but Perfect Scorers Disappeared" Disheartened Examinees

If No Perfect Scorers Among Current Students and Repeaters, First Time in 13 Years

More than five days have passed since the 2024 College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) was held, but no preliminary perfect scorers have yet appeared.

Although some test-takers do not publicly announce their perfect scores, so perfect scorers may emerge once the official scoring results are released, there are also observations that there may be no perfect scorers among current high school seniors this year, considering the 'difficult CSAT' (Bul-Suneung).

No Perfect Scorers Expected Among Both High School Seniors and Repeat Test-Takers

On the 17th, the day after the 2024 College Scholastic Ability Test, examinees are self-scoring in a third-year classroom at Jeonghwa Girls' High School in Suseong-gu, Daegu.
[Photo by Yonhap News]

According to the National Career and Academic Counseling Teachers Association (Jeonjinyeop) and others on the 21st, no perfect scorers have been identified among high school seniors since the 2024 CSAT was held on the 16th.

Under the integrated CSAT system for humanities and sciences, a perfect scorer is defined as a test-taker who receives a raw score perfect score in Korean, Mathematics, and two subjects in the Inquiry area, and achieves a top grade (1st grade) in the absolute evaluation subjects of English and Korean History.

A Jeonjinyeop official said, "Usually, students start preliminary scoring immediately after the CSAT, and if there is a perfect scorer, word spreads among teachers. Since there has been no talk of perfect scorers among high school seniors yet, it seems that there will be no perfect scorers among current students in this CSAT."

A representative from Megastudy Education, which holds preliminary scoring data for about 120,000 test-takers including high school seniors and repeat test-takers, also said, "It seems there are no perfect scorers among current students."

Some have raised the possibility that there may be no perfect scorers even including repeat test-takers. Major repeat academies such as Sidae Injae have not confirmed any perfect scorers among their students based on preliminary scoring results.

However, Megastudy Education has identified one repeat test-taker who took online lectures and achieved a perfect score based on preliminary scoring results.

Nonetheless, since there are many cases of inflated or falsely entered preliminary scores, the prevailing opinion is that the credibility of these results is still questionable.

If no perfect scorers emerge among high school seniors, it will be the first time in two years since the 2022 academic year.

In the first year of the integrated humanities and sciences CSAT, all Korean, Mathematics, and English sections were considered difficult, and only one repeat test-taker achieved a perfect score.

If no perfect scorers appear even including repeat test-takers, it will be the first time in 13 years since the 2011 academic year.

"No Killer Questions, But Only Hurt"... Ambiguity of Killer Questions and 'Difficult CSAT' Controversy Expected to Continue

Even though the Ministry of Education announced a policy to exclude 'killer questions' from this CSAT to curb private education, if no perfect scorers appear, controversy over the ambiguity of killer questions and the 'difficult CSAT' is expected to continue.

In fact, on student communities, complaints such as "They boasted about no killer questions but only hurt students' feelings" are flooding in.

A high school teacher pointed out, "The government's concept of killer questions itself was ambiguous," adding, "From the students' perspective, 'difficult questions for difficulty adjustment' are considered killer questions."

There are also criticisms that the sudden shift in the exam policy to exclude killer questions after the June mock test did not give students enough time to prepare.

Meanwhile, recent CSATs have produced the following numbers of perfect scorers: 3 in 2017, 15 in 2018, 9 in 2019, 15 in 2020, 6 in 2021, 1 in 2022, and 3 in 2023.

Additionally, the proportion of 'N-su' test-takers, including graduates and GED holders, in this year's CSAT was 35.3%, the highest since the 1996 academic year.

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