By Kim Rahn
More than 9,000 students who took last year’s college entrance exam will have their grades revised up because the educational authorities re-graded test papers due to an erroneous question, according to the Ministry of Education, Thursday.
It is not yet confirmed how many students will get the chance next year to enter the colleges they desired last year. Authorities promised to have them admitted to the schools if they did not get in because their test scores were lowered by the flawed question.
The question pertained to comparing the gross domestic products of members of the EU and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). While the “right” answer said that the EU’s GDP was larger than NAFTA’s as written in textbooks, some test-takers claimed that NAFTA’s has exceeded the EU’s since 2010 and that the question did not specify the base year.
The ministry and the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation said the grades of 9,073 test-takers, or about half of the 18,884 people who had “wrong” answers for the world geography question at the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT), will go up by one grade.
In the CSAT, test-takers are divided into nine grades according to their scores.
The decision comes amid a controversy over similar errors in this year’s CSAT.
Following the re-grading, colleges will reassess the scores of test-takers who failed to get in and give them a chance to be accepted if the revised scores are high enough for them to gain admission.
Those people can enter the initially desired schools next year as freshmen, or as sophomores if they chose other colleges and have attended them this year. For the latter, the colleges may recognize their credits earned at the other schools this year if their majors do not change.
For admission, the National Assembly will have to pass a special law to establish a legal ground for the test-takers to be admitted to the schools in addition to the original quotas.
The colleges will let the test-takers know if they can be accepted on Dec. 17. If these people want admission, they will have to apply to the schools between Feb. 13 and 16.
But the institute said it cannot predict how many students will actually be accepted, as each school has its own standards and CSAT grades are only one of many factors deciding admission, such as a separate essay test, school records and interviews.
Regarding the erroneous question, the institute said it will give a heavy penalty to the chief of CSAT department, and a light one to the vice chief. It said it cannot punish Seong Tae-je, then-president of the institute, as he already left that position.
“To prevent such errors from recurring, we’ll overhaul the whole process of exam, from preparation and question-setting to evaluation and objection reviews,” an official from the institute said.
The revision comes after the Seoul High Court ruled in favor of four test-takers who filed suit against the institute to nullify their grades that were affected by the flawed question, and the ministry decided to accept the court ruling.