[LETTERS TO THE EDITOR]On the admission process

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[LETTERS TO THE EDITOR]On the admission process

While eliminating the ranking of high schools in the university admission process may be a highly desirable goal, the eradication of academic cliques would not necessarily be a foregone conclusion: The students of those three districts would continue to have better educational opportunities than their counterparts elsewhere even if the government measures were strictly followed.
As an analogy, the IMF, World Bank and United Nations are domiciled in the United States, but if they were relocated to Korea and to the Gangnam, Songpa and Seocho districts, respectively, the impact of this on Korea prosperity would be almost nil.
“The University Life,” a student newspaper at Kyung Hee University, reported on responses to 1,200 questionnaires by Ewha, Hankuk, Hanyang, Kyung Hee, Korea and Yonsei university students. Yonsei, Ehwa and Korea give weighted averages to schools in their admissions process; the remaining three universities do not. Students in the survey from the first two universities feel the system favoring Gangnam, Songpa and Seocho districts is fair. Surprisingly, 56 percent of the Korea University students in the survey feel the system is unfair.
Kyunghee-ians were most in agreement with the Ministry of Education to make the CSAT less important by dividing test-takers into nine levels instead of lining them up based on overall scores. Korea and Hankuk university students were next highest in their agreement with the ministry. ... The goal, of course, should be to make academic marks less inflated. Allowing universities more autonomy to select students may not help bring the craze for private tutoring under control. ... In my experience, having taught at Incheon Science High School (where 50 percent of my students went to Kaist, 40 percent to Seoul National University and 10 percent to Yonsei, Korea and Ewha) and two private universities in Korea (one in Kwangju), not enough can be done to make the CSAT less important.


by Richard Thompson
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