A total of 3,184 additional applications were filed at 80 universities after the application deadline was extended because of a system failure in early-decision admissions for the 2027 academic year. Of those, 2,329 came from applicants whose attempts were logged when the error occurred, while the remaining 855 could not log in at all, leaving no digital record.
The Ministry of Education released the figures on the 30th in a report on application filings following the deadline extension. The ministry analyzed the data submitted by the application processing vendor.
When the system operated by Uway Apply, a private vendor, failed ahead of the early-decision filing deadline on the 11th, 100 of 116 universities pushed their cutoff back by one hour, from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. Additional applications were actually filed at 80 of those schools, totaling 3,184 across 1,781 admissions tracks.
Of the 3,184 late filings, 2,329, or about 73%, came from applicants who were in the middle of submitting when the error was recorded. The other 855 were cases in which the failure blocked logins entirely, so no digital trace remained.
The average competition ratio at the 80 universities rose about 0.22%, from 10.25 applicants per seat as of the original 6 p.m. deadline on the 11th to 10.27 as of the actual 7 p.m. cutoff.
In 69.8% of admissions tracks, only one additional application was filed, the ministry said. Tracks that drew 10 or more late filings were concentrated in essay-based and practical-skills admissions, which already had high competition ratios. At 17 universities that published final competition ratios during the extension period, 39 additional applications were filed across 35 admissions tracks.
The ministry also decided to extend its special investigation into Uway Apply, the vendor behind the outage. "We will set the schedule and plan for any further investigation based on an analysis of the first round of findings," a ministry official said. "Depending on those results, we plan to clarify the cause and where responsibility lies, and to draw up comprehensive measures for improvement."
Starting the same day, the ministry is also running a joint task force with the Korean Council for University Education and private vendors Uway Apply and Jinhaksa Apply to prepare for regular-decision admissions for the 2027 academic year. Through the task force, the ministry plans to review the vendors' entire service operating systems from the ground up and to build response systems including manuals, communication channels and simulation drills for outages. It will also prepare measures to prevent confusion during the filing process, such as improving how universities disclose final competition ratios.
