Essay #1(rewrite)

Sun Woo Kim

Prof. Kyle Brebner

IERW (4)

7 October 2015

Positive and Negative Effects of the Elimination of the Suneung Exam

             The first Thursday in November is probably the most important and nervous event for every third year high school student and even for their guardians in Korea. That day is the Suneung, one day exam for university admissions. Since the score of this exam determines the future of the examinees, students have prepared and studied for most of their high school lives, even losing sleep, to take this exam. However, let’s imagine this. What if the Suneung exam disappeared in Korea? It would be very delightful news to students because they would not need to worry or get stressed about this one day test for rest of their lives. If the Suneung exam were gone forever, only documents based on what students have participated in during their high school years would be evaluated for university admissions and this can naturally bring some positive and negative effects.

           First, one of the positive effects of changing Suneung system to student document examination is that students will get more chances to participate in diverse fields rather than just spending time studying. To be specific, students might need to fill their curriculums by participating in several activities such as sports, volunteer activities, language certificates, and achievement awards, and this will be a great chance for students to find their hidden abilities or interests. One of the unfortunate facts about Korea’s indoctrination, a forcing education method without specifically understanding it, is that it is limiting every students’ potential abilities. No matter what students want to study or interested in, the Korea education system is only providing courses which consider as “important” and mandatory subjects like Korean language and math. Thus, this limited teaching of few subjects causes students the dissatisfaction of their own university majors and it turns out to be that many university students in Korea drop out of schools to start university entrance admissions again. According to the Chung-Ang Newspaper, it is significantly proved that more than half of university students are not satisfied at either their main major or their campus life. Therefore, changing the Suneung system to evaluating only the documents based on students’ extra curriculums, personal statements, and GPA will be thoroughly enough to examine student’s potential and learning abilities for admission.

             Although students get chances to experience in diverse fields, this can possibly cause negative effects of unfair admissions. To be specific, students who are economically beneficial have higher chances to participate in diverse extra curriculum activities while poor students have limited chances. Eventually, this problem will arouse another serious social issue, an unfair admissions between between rich and poor. As we already know, private education is always the hottest concern for parents in Korea, and this is why the business of hagwon is actively owned in areas such as Daechi and Mokdong. Even though hagwons’ that teach Suneung subjects will be closed, there will be numerous numbers of hagwons be opened for searching information or counseling students in receiving the extra curriculum activities. If this issue really happens, the problem is that not only that there will be no fairness in university admission, but also that students who live wealthy will get higher chances to get admitted in high level colleges while those who don’t have enough money to fill good extra curriculum lists will get lesser chances to get into good colleges. To support this statement, Chung-Ang Newspaper University Evaluation Research reports that about 6 out of 10 examinees slightly noticed that during admission, being less wealthy have some disadvantages in acceptance of the universities. Hence, this example clearly proves that if the Suneung exam is eliminated and university admissions change to only a document examination, there will be a serious unfairness in admission and this problem can show another example of economic inequality in Korean society.

             Overall, when the Suneung exam is gone and a new admission system, an examination of students’ high school documents, is established there will be both positive and negative effects. The positive effect is that students will try out many experiences in different fields and get chances to discover their hidden abilities and interest in that certain field. From this, it will be helpful for students to choose majors related to their future careers. On the other hand, only students from wealthy background will receive more advantages during the process of filling their extra curriculum lists. Thus, this problem will lead another example of unfairness in gap between rich and poor in education field. Since the obsession of academic elitism won’t disappear forever in Korea society, the most suitable solution for this problem is that government or the Ministry of Education should decrease the Private Education by regulations, and create diverse “college entrance type,” such as country-side resident student admission, multi-cultural family child admission and low income family students, that suits for different types of students in order to prove a fair admission.