CSAT Math Calculus Concentration Persists... Korean Language Sees Rebound in Speech and Composition

It has been revealed that the tendency for college entrance exam candidates to choose calculus among the mathematics elective subjects in the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) remains strong.

On the 8th, according to the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation and the admissions industry, more than half of the examinees who took the 2025 CSAT chose calculus as their mathematics elective subject. The number of examinees who chose calculus was 227,232, accounting for 51.3% of all mathematics test takers. Next, probability and statistics had 202,266 examinees, making up 45.6%, and geometry had 13,735 examinees, accounting for only 3.1%.

On the morning of the 6th, the distribution day of the 2025 College Scholastic Ability Test score reports, students are receiving their score reports at Dongseong High School in Hyehwa-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul. Photo by Joint Press Corps

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The tendency to choose calculus has continued over the past few years. The proportion of examinees choosing calculus has steadily increased from 39.7% in the 2022 academic year to 45.4% in 2023, 51.0% in 2024, and 51.3% in 2025. In contrast, the proportion of examinees choosing probability and statistics dropped by 2.6 percentage points from 48.2% in 2023 to 45.6% this year, and geometry decreased by more than half from 6.4% to 3.1% during the same period.

In the Korean language section, the proportion of examinees choosing Language and Media, which had been on the rise for some time, declined this year. The percentage of students taking Language and Media increased from 35.1% in 2023 to 40.2% in 2024, but dropped to 37.0% in this year's CSAT, a decrease of 3.2 percentage points compared to last year.

The reason many examinees choose calculus is to achieve higher scores in the standard score system. The standard score indicates how much an individual's raw score differs from the average score. Generally, if the test is difficult and the average is low, the highest standard score rises; if the test is easy, it falls. Since the introduction of the integrated CSAT in 2022, even with the same raw score, the highest standard score (perfect scorer's standard score) for the relatively difficult elective subject (calculus) has remained higher. In last year's CSAT, the estimated highest standard scores for each mathematics elective subject were 137 for probability and statistics, 148 for calculus, and 142 for geometry.

Jongro Academy expects the highest standard scores for mathematics this year to be around 140 for calculus and 135 for probability and statistics, a difference of about 5 points. Therefore, students choosing calculus can miss about two questions and still receive a standard score similar to the perfect score in probability and statistics.

According to the 2025 CSAT scoring results released by the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation on the 5th, 84.3% of students who chose probability and statistics selected social studies, while 68.3% and 57.2% of students who chose calculus and geometry, respectively, selected science studies. The proportion of examinees who combined one social studies and one science studies subject was 6.2% among probability and statistics takers, 14.4% among calculus takers, and 12.7% among geometry takers. Additionally, Jongro Academy estimated that among the 18,199 students who scored in the top grade for mathematics, an overwhelming majority of 96.0% chose calculus or geometry, with only 4.0% choosing probability and statistics.

Lim Seong-ho, CEO of Jongro Academy, said, "Since the introduction of the integrated CSAT, the advantage for science track students has appeared for four consecutive years," adding, "Non-major admissions that support both humanities and science tracks may disadvantage humanities students."

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