53 Percent of Those Admitted to Seoul National University...

Among those who have been admitted to Seoul National University (SNU) for the 2002 school year, many of them have also been admitted to Korea University or Yonsei University, causing concerns about the population shifts among the universities.

According to a private preparatory academy Jungil Academy on the 31st, the analysis of candidates successfully admitted to SNU, KU and YU shows that 1584 persons (53 percent) out of 2978 persons who are admitted to SNU have also been accepted to KU or YU at the same time.

1072 persons (Humanities 499, Sciences 573) out of 2790 persons who were admitted to YU and 512 persons (Humanities 316, Sciences 196) out of 2578 persons who were admitted to KU have also been admitted to SNU, which is an increased of 93.5 percent and 24.8 percent for each Universities compared with the numbers for the 2001 school year admissions.

Particularly in social science and engineering at YU, there were 359 persons and 397 persons admitted to both SNU and YU respectively, and KU Law School, 114 persons out of 189 persons (60.3 percent) have dual acceptance and are expected to move to another university.

The cause of increasing dual acceptance has to do with the fact that special admissions was abolished this year and, consequently, the quota for scheduled admission expanded over 1000 persons.

Therefore, for some departments in SNU, whose competition ratio was rather low, a shortage of applicants is expected even after additional admissions. Consequently, there will be major enrollment shifts in both higher ranked universities as well as lower ranked ones.

295 persons admitted to SNU, 674 to KU, and 974 to YU gave up on 1st registration, and almost all the universities provided 3 to 5 additional registrations.

Shin Yeong-Sup, representative of Jungil Academy and critic, commented, "Those who were admitted to other universities in addition to KU and YU seem also to have been admitted to SNU."

Seong-Chul Hong sungchul@donga.com