June mock CSAT excludes 'killer questions,' stays within public school curriculum

By Kim Yong-jae, The Herald Business

The Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation said Thursday that the June mock College Scholastic Ability Test for the 2027 academic year was designed to "exclude killer questions — ultra-high-difficulty items — while maintaining differentiation within the scope of the public school curriculum through questions of appropriate difficulty distributed evenly across the exam."

The institute said the mock exam began at 8:40 a.m. Thursday at 2,124 high schools and 564 designated hagwon nationwide.

The institute doubled down on its commitment to aligning questions with high school curriculum content and standards, saying it had "fully excluded questions that favor students who have learned test-solving techniques and undergone repetitive training at private tutoring institutions," and had "distributed questions of appropriate difficulty evenly to maintain differentiation within the scope of public education."

The exam follows the existing integrated CSAT format. Korean language, mathematics and vocational studies are administered under a "common plus elective subject" structure. For social studies and science, students may freely choose up to two subjects from 17 options. English, Korean history, and second foreign language and classical Chinese are graded on an absolute scale.

The institute also said that, in the interest of producing questions with high validity, even previously tested content was revisited — with modifications to question format, concept framing or approach — when it covered core and fundamental material.

Korean language and English questions drew on passages and materials from a wide range of topics, while mathematics and exploratory subjects featured questions centered on higher-order thinking grounded in each subject's distinct characteristics.

Korean history, a mandatory subject, was set at a straightforward level, focusing on core content to assess students' basic understanding of the nation's history.

The linkage rate with EBS CSAT textbooks and lectures was maintained at around 50 percent, measured by the number of questions per subject area. English recorded the highest linkage rate at 55.6 percent, followed by Korean at 53.3 percent. All other subjects came in at 50.0 percent.

The institute said it sought to "enhance students' sense of connection to the linked materials by incorporating charts, illustrations, passages and other resources from the EBS reference books."