Cultural post #7

[Jenna Lee]

Suneung, also known as the College Scholastic Ability test, is an exam taken by high school seniors in Korea. It is taken place only once a year, and is comprised of a korean language section, mathematics section, english section, Korean history and social studies section, and another second language/chinese character section. High school students prepare for years in order to take this test, and they do so by studying the materials in school, in cram schools, with private tutors, or just on their own. The suneung is heavily criticized because it is only held once a year- so if a student did not do well on the exam and did not get accepted into the college they wanted to attend, they would have to wait and study for another whole year. Meanwhile, in the U.S., we could take the SAT or the ACT numbers of times during the school year. And there are many people that do not do well even on their second and third tries, so they spend years even after graduating high school to get a good score on the exam. People criticize the exam for being time inefficient for the students that have to retake the exam, which I agree with as well.

[Wonjun Kim]

Some of my friends in Korea are in much lower grades than me because they chose to retake the college entrance exam again. I completely agree that this is super inefficient as failing once would make you waste an entire year. Because Suneung is such a big deal in Korea, during the Suneung testing day, people go to work at a later time so the students can make it to their school without having to worry about being late due to traffic.

[Kate Park]

Wow, I’ve heard about this, but I can’t believe students in Korea have to deal with that much pressure. I can’t imagine having to spend a whole year waiting to be able to take the exam again. I think I took it for granted when I retook the SAT and ACT in high school. We had second, third, etc. chances. Being able to retake those tests to obtain a higher score was reassuring. High school students already have to study so much, I am not surprised that the suicide rate in Korea is high. It’s really unfortunate. 

[Jenna Lee]

Wow, I didn't expect China to have a similar concept for college entrance exams. It must be difficult for Chinese students as well, since it's still once a year. 

[Devin Chen]

The college entrance exam is very similar in China as well! We have Gaokao that is only administered once a year. I would imagine that getting into elite universities in Korea is much harder, because there are fewer universities in Korean than China. It is interesting that this culture of heavy study is spread across Asian countries.