English scores remain tough in June mock CSAT as students flock to social studies

By Kim Yong-jae, The Herald Business

Only about 4 percent of test-takers earned the top rating in the English section of the June mock College Scholastic Ability Test for the 2027 academic year, results showed Tuesday. The so-called "social studies run" — a trend of science-track students opting for social studies subjects — also intensified, pointing to English difficulty and subject concentration as major variables in this year's university admissions.

The Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation announced Tuesday that it would notify test-takers of their scores from the June mock CSAT, held June 4. A total of 411,302 students sat the exam — 328,242 of them current students and 83,060 graduates or those who passed the qualification exam.

English, assessed under an absolute grading system, remained difficult following last year's CSAT. A total of 16,979 test-takers received the top rating, representing just 4.13 percent of the 410,655 who sat the English section. In last year's CSAT, the share of top-rated English scorers was limited to 3.11 percent — nearly half the 6.22 percent recorded the year before — making it the hardest English exam since the switch to absolute grading.

Analysts note that even under absolute grading, English difficulty still significantly affects whether students meet the minimum academic thresholds for rolling admissions and shapes their strategies for regular admissions, meaning English is likely to remain a source of pressure for test-takers this year as well.

In the elective subject area, the concentration toward social studies grew more pronounced. Of those who sat the social and science studies sections, 278,883 took only social studies subjects, while just 55,450 sat only science subjects. Another 69,856 students combined social and science subjects.

Concentration within individual elective subjects also continued. In Korean language, 302,241 students — 73.89 percent — chose "Speech and Composition," while 106,805, or 26.11 percent, chose "Language and Media." In mathematics, "Probability and Statistics" was the most popular choice at 264,595 students, or 65.17 percent, followed by "Calculus" at 130,435 (32.13 percent) and "Geometry" at 10,967 (2.70 percent).

Among social studies subjects, "Society and Culture" drew the most test-takers at 226,384, followed by "Lifestyle and Ethics" at 192,113. In science, Earth Science I and Life Science I were relatively popular at 61,716 and 55,622 students respectively, while Science II subjects attracted far fewer — Chemistry II had the lowest enrollment of any social or science subject at just 4,117 students.

Meanwhile, score reports will include standard scores, percentile rankings and ratings for Korean, mathematics and elective subjects. The name of the chosen elective will also appear for Korean, mathematics, elective subjects, and second foreign language and classical Chinese. English, Korean history, and second foreign language and classical Chinese will be reported only as absolute ratings. Scores for 175 students who took the exam through an online testing portal were excluded from the scoring analysis.