Forty-four Percent of College Applications Are on Rolling Basis

Seven years into a new college entrance system, applicants’ school-life records factor greatly in the success of their applications for the 2005 academic year.

The number of applicants who uses rolling-basis applications rose to 44.3 percent from 38.8 percent last year.

Most colleges and universities review language, math, and foreign language scores in the plus analytic scores in the PSAT (3 + 1) or math, foreign language and science scores (2 + 1) in selecting students.

On January 28, the Korean Council for College Education announced the statistics for 199 four-year colleges’ selection processes. Dongduk Women’s University, citing internal disputes, did not submit data to the council.

The entire size of the Class of 2005 across the colleges is estimated at 394,379, adjusted by Dongduk’s dearth. It represents an increase of 300 students year-on-year.

Applicants’ student records at high schools gain more importance when it comes to rolling-basis applications. For students who will apply within regular deadlines, the records will increase from 8.21 percent of the students’ merits to 10.73 percent for humanity applicants and to 10.36 for natural science and engineering applicants.

The number of colleges which use rolling-based and deadline applications went up to 105 from 91.

Most colleges allow applicants the option to take three to four math and analytic sections of the PSAT, which students believe embrace 8-17 subjects they study at high school. Then the colleges evaluate two or three sections. As for Seoul National University, it evaluates Korean history in social studies sections and two science sections.

About 104 colleges use raw PSAT scores and about 90 colleges use percentiles for evaluation, while five schools use both. Because the raw scores frequently failed to correctly reflect the difference in difficulty among sections, colleges find ways to normalize the scores.

As for school-life records, 41 colleges evaluate all subjects that students took during the last two years of high school while 126 colleges consider some of them. For more information, visit the council’s homepage at univ.kcue.or.kr.

Seong-Chul Hong sungchul@donga.com