This year’s KSAT excludes ‘killers’ and ask ‘moderate-level’ questions

The Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE) announced on Sunday that this year’s KSAT, the country’s College Scholastic Ability Test, would ask questions of “a moderate level of difficulty.” The agency’s guidelines came after the South Korean government recently advised it to cut from the eight-hour exam the so-called “killer” questions of too high a difficulty requiring knowledge beyond the scope of high school students.

The KSAT-organizing KICE on Sunday released a detailed plan to implement the test scheduled this November. It explained, “The test will allow any student who studies faithfully in school along with EBS materials and classes to handle moderate-level questions.” The only difference from last year’s blueprint was a mentioning of “moderate-level questions.” In response to public concerns about the exclusion of “killer questions” and, consequently, too low a level of difficulty, the test organizing agency seemingly intended to emphasize the test’s basic principle of assessing the level of students properly.

Just as last year, the upcoming test will link 50 percent of its questions to the content covered in EBS materials and classes. Making as few tweaks as possible to graphs, pictures, and texts associated with questions, the KICE will make it easy for students to notice how linked the test is to EBS content.

As there is not much difference in terms of the test's framework between the previous test and this year's, test-taking students are becoming sensitive about how difficult the test will be – particularly about if and how much the difficulty level in math is to be lowered. In the recent tests from the 2022 CSAT through to the June Mock Test this year, three out of eight math questions officially categorized as arduously difficult are part of the “Calculus” section. Given this, it is expected that the KICE will possibly make a downward adjustment to this section's difficulty level.


Sung-Min Park min@donga.com