The 2027 College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT), South Korea's national university entrance exam, will be held on November 19. The testing agency reaffirmed its commitment to excluding questions that favor private tutoring-style drill techniques while maintaining appropriate differentiation within the scope of public education.
The Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE) announced the "2027 CSAT Basic Implementation Plan" on Thursday. This year's exam will be designed within the scope of the 2015 Revised National Curriculum, with questions solvable through regular school classes and EBS textbooks and lectures. The EBS linkage will be maintained indirectly, applying a ratio of approximately 50% of questions by subject area. "We will exclude questions that give an advantage to students who have repeatedly practiced problem-solving techniques through private education, while maintaining appropriate differentiation within the public education scope," KICE President Kim Mun-hee said at a briefing held at the Government Sejong Complex. "After the CSAT concludes, we will disclose curriculum-based references including achievement standards for each question to enhance transparency and predictability in test development," Kim added.
The exam structure remains the same as last year. Korean Language and Mathematics retain their common-plus-elective subject format. For Korean Language, all test-takers sit for Reading and Literature as common sections and choose one elective from either "Speech and Writing" or "Language and Media." For Mathematics, Math I and Math II serve as common sections, with one elective chosen from "Probability and Statistics," "Calculus," or "Geometry."
In the Social Studies and Sciences section, students may select up to two from 17 subjects regardless of their academic track. English, Korean History, and Second Foreign Language/Chinese Characters are graded on an absolute evaluation scale. The English section consists of 45 questions, of which 17 are listening comprehension items administered within 25 minutes. Korean History is a mandatory subject, and failure to take it invalidates the entire exam.
Test development oversight will also be partially improved. "Starting with the June mock exam, we will expand the proportion of schoolteacher item writers to approximately 50% and refine difficulty verification through a question-by-question review system," Kim said. Regarding last year's English section, Kim noted that "the issue was less about overall difficulty and more about the low proportion of top-grade recipients," adding that "we will review not only overall difficulty but also the size of the top-grade cohort."
Support measures for test-takers will continue. An online pre-registration system allows photo uploads, exam section selection, and fee payment, with final registration completed through an in-person visit. Visually impaired examinees will be provided with screen-reading software and braille display terminals.
The exam schedule includes mock tests on June 4 and September 2, followed by the main test on November 19. Registration runs from August 24 to September 4, and scores will be released on December 11.
