More than 15% of test-takers reached the top grade in English on the September mock exam, after complaints that the subject was punishingly difficult on both last year's college entrance exam and the June mock test. With the actual exam about a month and a half away, the sharp drop in difficulty raises the question of what level test-setters will aim for.
The Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation released the scoring results of the September mock exam for the 2027 College Scholastic Ability Test on the 28th. A total of 396,118 people sat the exam on Sept. 2, including 298,250 high school students and 97,868 graduates and holders of high school equivalency certificates.
English is graded on an absolute scale, and 61,457 test-takers scored 90 or higher out of 100 to earn the top grade, or 15.54% of all who took the subject. Another 89,291 students, or 22.58%, landed in the second tier, and 92,836, or 23.48%, in the third.
That is far higher than on the 2026 CSAT held last year and on this year's June mock test. Only 3.11% of test-takers, or 15,154 students, reached the top English grade on last year's CSAT, the lowest since absolute grading was introduced for the subject in the 2018 academic year. The institute acknowledged at the time that the English section had turned out harder than intended and that it had failed to calibrate the difficulty. On the June mock test this year, only 16,979 students, or 4.13%, reached the top grade, the third-lowest level across all mock exams and actual CSATs to date.
This time, assessments that the English section had become considerably easier emerged immediately after the exam. A team of classroom teachers working with EBS analyzed the September English section as easier than both last year's CSAT and this year's June mock test. More answer choices drew on relatively familiar vocabulary instead of abstract concepts, which lowered the perceived difficulty, the teachers said.
In Korean, the standardized score cutoff for the top grade was 131 points, with 16,363 students, or 4.16%, reaching that tier. In math, the cutoff was 128 points, with 21,666 students, or 5.55%.
In the elective subjects, the rush toward social studies continued. Of the 390,120 students who took social studies or science subjects, 270,301 chose social studies subjects only. Just 51,461 chose science subjects only, while 68,358 took a mix of the two. By subject, society and culture drew the largest number of test-takers at 228,525.
"English swings widely in difficulty from exam to exam, and gaps have also opened up between Korean and math, making it even harder to predict scores by subject on this year's CSAT," said Lim Sung-ho, CEO of Jongro Academy. "In the elective subjects in particular, the rush toward social studies is shifting the number of test-takers sharply, which can create advantages or disadvantages unrelated to a student's own ability, and students should also prepare for the possibility that English is set harder than on the September mock test."
