The 2026 College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) began simultaneously at 8:40 a.m. on the 13th. General test-takers finish at 5:45 p.m., and test-takers eligible for accommodations such as those with severe visual impairments finish at 8:25 p.m.
CSAT Chairperson Kim Chang-won (Gyeongin National University of Education professor) said at a briefing on test trends that day, "Based on the number of questions, the EBS linkage rate was set at around 50% with the aim of enhancing the perceived linkage." The specific EBS linkage rates by section are ▲ Korean 53.3% ▲ Math 50% ▲ English 55.6% ▲ Korean history 50% ▲ Social studies 50% ▲ Science 50% ▲ Vocational studies 50% ▲ Second foreign language/Classical Chinese 50%.
Chairperson Kim said, "To help normalize high school education, we focused on core and fundamental content in the curriculum," and added, "If a topic is core content in the curriculum, even if it has been covered in basic tests, we changed the form of the question and the problem-solving approach as needed."
He also said so-called "killer questions" were excluded. Chairperson Kim said, "We excluded questions advantageous to students who learned problem-solving tricks and trained repeatedly in private education, and we wrote the test so that discrimination can be secured with content covered in public education alone."
He went on, "In all sections, we considered the scope and level of the current curriculum to ease excessive test preparation burdens on students and to help strengthen school education, and we wrote the test based on analysis of last year's CSAT and the two mock tests administered this year."
This year, as the trend of "satal-run" (choosing social studies, which is relatively less burdensome than science, for the inquiry section) deepens, some analysts say the choice of inquiry subjects will be the biggest variable in college admissions. In response, Chairperson Kim said, "To minimize advantages and disadvantages among elective subjects, we wrote questions based on the curriculum according to the target difficulty," adding, "I think there will be no advantage or disadvantage regardless of which subject is chosen."
Meanwhile, the test proceeds in this order starting with the first period, Korean (08:40–10:00): ▲ second period, Math (10:30–12:10) ▲ third period, English (13:10–14:20) ▲ fourth period, Korean history and inquiry (14:50–16:37) ▲ fifth period, second foreign language/Classical Chinese (17:05–17:45). Korean history is a required section, and all test-takers must take it. If they do not, the CSAT itself is invalidated.
From immediately after the CSAT until 6 p.m. on the 17th, objections to questions and answers will be accepted through the dedicated objection board on the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE) website. The final answers will then be confirmed at 5 p.m. on the 25th. Score reports will be delivered to test-takers on the 5th of next month.