The 2027 College Scholastic Ability Test will be held on Thursday, Nov. 19. The Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE) said it plans to set an appropriate difficulty level to prevent a recurrence of issues like last year's so-called "killer CSAT" controversy in the English subject.
KICE and the Ministry of Education on the 31st released the basic plan for administering the 2026 CSAT at the Government Complex Sejong.
KICE said, "We plan to write items with an appropriate level of difficulty so that students who faithfully receive school education within the scope of public education and supplement it with EBS-linked textbooks and lectures can solve the problems," adding, "We will fully apply the Ministry of Education's 'CSAT item-writing system improvement plan' and will disclose the curriculum basis, such as item-level achievement standards, after the CSAT."
Previously, the Ministry of Education conducted a KICE review after the 2026 CSAT and presented an improvement plan for the CSAT item-writing system. At that time, the share of first-grade scores in the CSAT English section hit a record low of 3.11%, sparking controversy over a "killer CSAT." The Ministry of Education said it would expand the share of teachers among item writers to around 50% and allow the use of artificial intelligence (AI) for difficulty prediction and review of similar items.
In response, KICE President Kim Moon-hee said, "We will increase the proportion of on-site teachers among item writers, and in addition to difficulty checks, we will thoroughly check the size of the first grade in English."
Meanwhile, the Korean language and mathematics sections will be taken as "common subject + elective subject." For Korean, in addition to the common subjects Reading and Literature, test-takers must choose one of "Speech and Composition" or "Language and Media." For mathematics, Mathematics I and Mathematics II are common subjects, and test-takers choose one among "Probability and Statistics," "Calculus," or "Geometry." For social studies and science inquiry, test-takers may choose up to two subjects from a total of 17. Korean history is again designated as mandatory this year. English, Korean history, and the second foreign language/classical Chinese sections will be administered with absolute grading.
The EBS linkage rate will be maintained at around 50%. Since 2012, the government has continued an item-writing method that links CSAT questions to EBS textbooks as one way to reduce private education. Initially, 70% of CSAT questions were linked to EBS, but after problems arose such as EBS textbooks replacing school textbooks, the rate has been kept at around 50% since the 2022 CSAT.
Mock exams held before the CSAT will take place twice, on June 4 and Sept. 2.
KICE, after releasing the basic plan for administering the CSAT that day, will announce the detailed implementation plan on July 6. Application distribution and submission will run from Aug. 24 to Sept. 4. Objections to questions and answers after the CSAT will be accepted from Nov. 19 to 23. The final answers for the CSAT will be confirmed on Dec. 1.
The CSAT score report date is Friday, Dec. 11. The score report will indicate the sections and subjects taken. For each section and subject, the standard score, percentile, and grade will be shown, but for the English, Korean history, and second foreign language/classical Chinese sections, only the grade under absolute grading will be provided. Also, if a test-taker does not take the Korean history section, the entire test will be invalidated and a score report will not be issued.