Repeat Test-Takers See Gains in Korean, Math, and Inquiry... But 1 in 4 See English Grade Drop

Jinhaksa Releases Analysis of Repeat Test-Takers' Performance

The Ministry of Education has announced its analysis of the reasons behind its failure to control the difficulty level of the English section of the 2026 College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) and corresponding improvement measures, and it has been found that even repeat test-takers (N-susaeng) had difficulty raising their English grades.

On the 15th, Jinhaksa compared changes in section-by-section grades for repeat test-takers who sat the CSAT for two consecutive years and found that the proportion whose English grade improved was only 31.3%. This figure is significantly lower than in other sections, suggesting that the increased difficulty of the English section, combined with its nature as an absolute grading subject, acted as a key variable.

In Korean (48.8%), mathematics (46.4%), and inquiry (54.9%), nearly half of the test-takers succeeded in raising their grades compared to the previous year. In contrast, only 31.3% saw their English grade rise, making it the subject that benefited the least from the repeat-taking (N-susaeng) effect. In fact, the proportion whose English grade fell (24.7%) was the highest among all sections.

The stagnation in English performance is closely related to the increased difficulty of the English section on the 2026 CSAT. Because English is graded on an absolute scale, even if a student’s raw score improves, their grade often does not change unless they cross a fixed score threshold (90 points for Grade 1, 80 points for Grade 2, etc.). With the higher difficulty level on the 2026 CSAT, it became even harder to achieve an upward shift in grades.

This contrast is also clearly visible in year-on-year comparisons. The proportion of repeat test-takers whose English grade improved for the 2025 CSAT was 34.3%, but for the 2026 CSAT it was 31.3%, a decrease of 3.0 percentage points. For 2026 repeat test-takers, the share of students whose grades improved in Korean, mathematics, and inquiry was higher than that of 2025 repeat test-takers, but only in English did the improvement rate fall, showing a trend opposite to that of the other sections.

Wooyeon Cheol, Head of the Jinhaksa Entrance Examination Strategy Research Institute, analyzed, "For repeat test-takers who sat the CSAT consecutively, the stabilizing and upward effects on performance were clearly visible in Korean, mathematics, and inquiry, but in English, due to the absolute grading structure, it is difficult for score improvements to translate directly into higher grades," adding, "On the 2026 CSAT, the increase in question difficulty appears to have further reinforced this characteristic."

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