SNU Establishes Equal-Opportunity Admission Guidelines

Seoul National University has announced its admission criteria for the 2009 academic year, which introduces new criteria offering equal opportunities for underprivileged students and distinguishes between the first and second grade in high school performance records.

The university held an administrative meeting on Thursday to announce its 2009 admission guidelines and decided to select a total of 2,894 freshmen next year, reduced by 268 from 2008. It is the first time for the student quota for admission to fall below 3,000, or 44 percent of the 1981 academic year’s level.

Among the student quota, 758 students (26.2 percent), will be selected for regional balance, and the proportion of "special ability entrants" is set at 937 (32.4 percent). Regular application students will number 1,199 (41.4 percent), meaning the number of early decision students slightly increased.

SNU also plans to overhaul the state-administered College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) to help ease the fierce competition for college entrance. It will push for a two-stage plan to allow Humanities and Science colleges to select two folds of applicants (three folds for Education and Physical Education departments) and make final decisions in selecting new students via student records (50 percent), essay (30 percent) and interviews (20 percent).

As for the essay for students on regular application, the school decided to maintain the same criteria such as the number of questions, time and test trends from last year. The university will expand its special admission system for Students from agricultural and fishing villages and students with disabilities to include admission for foreign students and in consideration of regional balance.

The school plans to select additional 30 students from underprivileged families including recipients of the National Basic Livelihood Security in an effort to select students based on the equal opportunity principles.

Last year, the school gave the same score to students with the first and second grades in admission evaluation, but it will differentiate the two to secure discrimination in their high school performance.

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