Foreign high school graduates get cold shoulder from university students

K-campus

Published: 19 Jul. 2022, 11:04 Updated: 03 Mar. 2023, 17:45

Foreign high school graduates get cold shoulder from university students

[SHUTTERSTOCK]

From the beginning of the college admission process until the moment you graduate, the way a student was admitted stays surprisingly relevant, at least in Korea.

Korea is infamous for having a highly competitive college admissions system, and only the top students get to enroll in a university in the capital city, Seoul. Local students can either take the college exams, or CSATs, for the regular admissions route, known as jungsi, or the early decision admission route, known as susi, which comes in many forms, where students apply with their school grades and other qualifications, scores and extracurricular activity records.

However, there are a few exceptions known as teungnye, or a special admission route — and this is where the labels come in.

Through this special admission route, students who lived overseas for three years or more don’t have to take the CSATs. They can apply to Korean universities with their high school GPA earned abroad and extra certifications such as the SAT or TOEFL.

On Everytime, a community mobile app for university students, it isn’t hard to find users who write about how they believe overseas students had it easier than local students in getting accepted to university.

“I have heard people talk about teungnye students online,” said Kim Min-ji, a third-year student studying economics at Yonsei University. “Based on what I have seen online, some people have stereotypes that teungnye students get admitted to top universities much more effortlessly than those who prepare for university entrance exams here in Korea.”

One of the main reasons behind the negative stares is the different academic backgrounds. There is a big difference between Korean high schools and the international Advanced Placement (AP) program and International Baccalaureate (IB) system, which are high school programs for students who want to take various advanced or higher level courses. Students who went through grueling studies at Korean schools empathize with each other and may look down upon students that went to international schools, believing they had it easier.

“For Korean universities, preparing for admissions is a very arduous process, which is the biggest priority during high school,” Kim said.

Kim studied abroad in China during middle and high school and entered university through one of the early admissions routes, specifically for students who graduated from high school overseas. Students who graduated from overseas high schools are only eligible to apply through that route.

Kim says university admissions is an important period for students. Those who graduated from the same education system tend to relate to each other’s struggles unique to the experiences of high school and specific admission routes.

“I think that many university students are willing to share their experiences with those who have been through the same hardships during high school so that they can empathize with each other,” said Kim. “If they share the same admissions process, it gives them some sense of belonging and connection. Especially for the freshmen, the admissions route is a common topic talked about since they just graduated from high school.”

Most local high school students have participated in nighttime self-study, known as yaganjaseup, shortened as yaja, during their high school years. High schools stay open until around 10 p.m. so students can study late.

Yaja is a big part of local students’ high school memories.

The mandatory and elective subjects in Korean schools require a substantial amount of studying to get the highest marks and ranks.

Han Yu-ri, a third-year student majoring in climate and energy systems engineering at Ewha Womans University, said, “Students who decided to take the CSATs do not concentrate on school classes starting from the second year of high school, and focus solely on the CSATs during the majority of their high school career. They must continuously solve the same types of questions for all their subjects over and over until the day of the CSATs. Teachers also know the difficulties of entrance exams, so they simply allow the jungsi students to study their own materials during class.”

Han is a local high school graduate who entered college through one of the early admission routes that puts more weight on essay writing. She comes from a different admission route, but a substantial amount of her high school friends entered university taking the CSATs under the jungsi route. She says that the country must improve the current entrance examination system in many ways, especially for the jungsi route.

“Korea needs to study the cases of entrance examinations in foreign countries that produce many talents and apply them to the situation in Korea.”

One reference of a different education program abroad could be the system in the United States.

Students in the AP program can decide on the number of AP courses they take. They can balance their GPA by choosing how many AP subjects they take according to their individual scholastic abilities.

Another reason that teungnye students are regarded somewhat differently by other students is that the competition for admission tends to be less intense than that of other admission routes like jungsi or susi.

For example, the competition ratio for susi for Yonsei University’s College of Business was 6.94:1 for the class of 2021 (541 people competing for 78 spots) whereas the ratio for teungnye students that year was 4.86:1 (34 people competing for 7 spots). This is largely because there are significantly fewer students who are eligible to apply for the teungnye admissions route than the regular admissions.

However, for those experiencing fierce competition to enter college, the difference in the figures could come across as unfair.

Another reason could be that people often think those living abroad are wealthy and, thus, privileged. Although it is not always the case that expats are wealthy, it is commonly believed that in order to study abroad one needs enough wealth to pay for living and tuition for expensive international schools.

An anonymous 20-year-old university student expressed that a student’s university admissions route not only shows how they got into a university, but also how the person grew up and progressed in life.

The topic of teungnye is controversial, but the system still remains within Korean university admissions to support the internationalization of Korea. The benefits of the teungnye system encourage more families to live abroad as expats, contributing to Korea’s presence in international business. The families know that their children can return to Korea for university education even if they live abroad for a long period.

The teungnye system also contributes to the growing diversity of the Korean college demographic. Now, many university students come from diverse educational backgrounds and admission routes, and these students all have different experiences prior to entering college. Teungnye students offer diversity to the university campus, as they studied under various education systems in different countries.

BY STUDENT REPORTER KIM NA-YOON [kjd.kcampus@joongang.co.kr]