College of Medicine at Seoul National University Placed the 17th!

The College of Medicine at Seoul National University resulted in the lowest score in the history on the National Examination for Medical practitioners this year, as they placed the 17th out of the 40 universities nationwide and showed the ratio of the successful applicants to be just 89%.

According to the National Health Personal Licensing Examination Board, 156 applicants out of 175 applicants from the College of Medicine at Seoul National University have passed the 67th Doctor’s National Examination held on 8th and 9th. The ratio of the successful applicants for Seoul National University is 89.1% and although it is a bit higher than the general average, they only placed the 17th in the rating.

On the other side, the University of Ulsan had 100% ratio for four years in a row and the University of Jeju, the University of SeoNam and the University of Gangwon had 100% ratio just like the last year. Moreover, the School of Medicine at Eulji University and the College of Medicine at Pochon CHA University, which had their first graduates, had all of their examinees passed the examination.

In relation to this outcome, the medical field asserts that the newly established Colleges of Medicine thoroughly prepared their students for the exam thus had good results on the exam. But on the other side, the traditional Colleges of Medicine, such as Seoul National University, Yonsei University, Korea University, Kyung Hee University and the like, had low outcomes on the exam because these colleges focused on giving the students the actual practical training.

Also, some have pointed out that there must be some problems to the examination method considering the fact that a couple of the newly born Colleges of Medicine are short of practical machines and material thus are not providing the actual training to their students as they should.

However, the personnel of the newly born Colleges of Medicines evaluated, “This is a result due to the advanced students coming together to the Colleges of Medicines.”

“It is true that we have somewhat neglected the National Examination since our education goal was on culturing the doctors’ fundamental elementary knowledge, thus students who were capable of passing the exam have been failed. We will put our effort to increase the ratio of the successful applicants on the Doctor’s Examination by assisting the textbook education courses,” stated the personnel from Seoul National University.

Seong-Ju Lee stein33@donga.com