hankyoreh

Students of Banpo High School celebrate upon completing this year’s College Scholastic Ability Test on Dec. 3. (Kim Bong-gyu, staff photographer)

“I’ve been really worried, to the point that when I talk with my friends, it’s mostly been about COVID-19. I feel a lot better now that the test is behind me.”

Kim Jae-yeon, 18, sounded cheerful after completing the 2021 College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) on Dec. 3 in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province. This year has been a rocky one for students scheduled to take the country’s university admissions exam. There have been a number of dicey moments, with the CSAT postponed once and in-person classes suspended due to the pandemic.

“It’s thanks to my friends that I’ve arrived at this point,” Kim said. “I just want to congratulate all the students who took the test on how hard they’ve worked.”

The CSAT is now complete, the test having taken place amid widespread anxiety over COVID’s spread. According to the Ministry of Education (MOE), 426,344 students sat for the test during the first session that day, or 86.83% of 490,992 applicants. The absence rate of 13.17% was the highest ever recorded, with rates of 11.52% registered last year and 10.68% the year before. The exam sites were also different: 41 students who tested positive for the virus took the exam at hospitals or community treatment centers.

Education and health officials explained that they had tested 414 students for COVID-19 between the eve and the morning of the CSAT. Five students who tested positive ahead of the examination’s start were allocated to separate locations. Another 456 students in quarantine took the exam at separate sites throughout the country, while 160 students were assigned standard exam sites but ended up taking the exam in isolation due to fever and other symptoms.

The atmosphere surrounding the “COVID CSAT” was a change from past years. While it is customary for parents and loved ones to cheer students on in front of schools on exam day, orders from the central and local governments prevented that from happening this year. Sehwa High School in Seoul’s Seocho District met a steady stream of students at around 7:30 am, but the mood was subdued. Parents offered a few words of encouragement to their kids before promptly heading back home.

The tightly closed school gates opened up again as the exam ended around 4:40 pm, but the students would not begin to emerge for another 20 minutes or so. Adherence to social distancing measures delayed their departure. Son Yo-han, 18, who spoke to the Hankyoreh in front of Yongsan High School in Seoul, said, “Even if the partitions and masks were frustrating, they were necessary.”

“It feels good now that the CSAT is over,” he said.

Proctors and students were diagnosed with COVID-19 up until exam day. In Daejeon, reserve staff were dispatched to replace 31 proctors and teachers who had been in contact with a teacher and a CSAT proctor that had tested positive. In Incheon, a student who tested positive on the morning of the CSAT was sent to take the exam at a temporary site set up for diagnosed students at Incheon Medical Center.

One student very nearly missed the exam due to stomach pains not associated with COVID-19. At Sangil Girls’ High School in Gwangju’s Seo (West) District, one student suddenly collapsed with stomach pains at around 8:30 am, just before the first session (the Korean portion) of the exam was set to begin. The student was taken by a standby ambulance to a hospital around a kilometer away, where doctors detected no major illnesses. One of the proctors present in the classroom at the time took the student’s exam to the hospital, where the student completed the exam.

By Kang Jae-gu and Park Yoon-kyung, staff reporters, Song In-geol, Daejeon correspondent, and Lee Jung-ha, Incheon correspondent

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