The fallout from a system failure during South Korea's early college admissions filing period is widening. A one-hour extension of the filing deadline has triggered a dispute over fairness among applicants, because students who filed during the extra hour were able to watch competition ratios longer than those who submitted by the original cutoff. Education authorities have launched a full review of the application system and a remedy process for affected students, but some applicants are going further, arguing that applications filed during the extension should be voided.
According to education officials on the 13th, an error occurred in the system of Uway Apply, an agency that handles early admissions applications, at around 5:50 p.m. on the 11th. As a result, some applicants who had been monitoring filing trends until just before the deadline were unable to complete their applications or payments.
Uway Apply and Jinhaksa effectively split the market for handling university early admissions applications. Universities contract with one of the two firms, or with both, to receive applications. At universities that use only Uway, normal filing was impossible from 5:50 p.m., when the failure began, until the original 6 p.m. deadline.
The Korean Council for University Education pushed the deadline back by an hour, from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., to prevent students from being locked out. Uway's system was restored at around 6:20 p.m., about 30 minutes after the failure began, and filing continued for roughly 40 minutes afterward. Kyung Hee University, Kookmin University, Dongduk Women's University, Sangmyung University, Seoul National University of Science and Technology and Seoul National University of Education were also reported to have extended their deadlines. The Ministry of Education estimates that about 1,200 students were unable to complete their applications because of the outage.
The system was restored relatively quickly, and the incident initially appeared to be contained. But the following day, complaints about fairness spread among applicants and parents, who said the extension had affected students' application strategies. The core objection is that students who submitted before the failure and those who filed during the additional time after the system was restored were applying under different conditions.
During the early admissions filing period, applicants watch publicly disclosed competition ratios as they decide which departments to apply to — a strategic game of timing. With filing extended by an hour, some applicants were able to check competition ratios even after the original deadline and then apply. That is why students complain that application conditions differed from one applicant to another, undermining fairness.
One applicant, identified as A, said, "Only the people who filed early because they were worried about a server error ended up looking foolish," adding that "it amounts to giving an extra chance to those who watched the competition ratios longer." Another applicant said, "The department I applied to had a ratio of 3-to-1 when I applied, and by the next day it had risen to 7-to-1," adding, "In the school-record-based track, applicants have similar grades, so the competition ratio matters too. It's frustrating."
Admissions industry officials say this year's unusually intense last-minute jockeying may have contributed to the surge in traffic. This year's college admissions cycle drew 196,473 repeat test-takers, the most since the 2004 academic year, driven in part by the introduction of a regional physician program and by the fact that this is the last college entrance exam under the current system.
Critics also say education authorities failed to properly supervise the process even though a core step in college admissions was outsourced to private firms. According to the Fair Trade Commission, based on contracts for handling early admissions applications for the 2023 academic year, Uway held a 48.4% share, Jinhaksa 39.0%, and contracts with both firms accounted for 12.6%. The two companies received corrective orders from the FTC last year over goods and other benefits worth close to 10 billion won provided to universities. Because application processing is concentrated in a small number of firms, critics say education authorities should more strictly manage server capacity, failure response systems and filing standards for emergencies.
The Education Ministry is working with the council on remedies to contain the situation. A ministry official said, "We will run a remedy application process from 9 a.m. on the 14th to 6 p.m. on the 16th for applicants who could not complete their filings because of the system failure," and stressed that "in consideration of fairness toward applicants who completed their filings normally, the remedy process will be conducted without allowing changes to the department applied for." The official added, "If unfair cases are found among applicants who newly filed at universities where competition ratios were exposed during the extended filing period, we plan to seek additional measures," and said, "We also plan to conduct a full review of the application system and measures to prevent a recurrence."
