One out of three freshmen at Seoul National University, Yonsei University, and Korea University (Seo-Yeon-Go) last year was from Seoul.
According to the university information disclosure site University Alimi on the 23rd, among 13,475 freshmen at Seo-Yeon-Go for the 2025 academic year, 4,337 were from Seoul, accounting for 32.2%. That is roughly double the average proportion of students from Seoul at four-year universities nationwide (16.0%).
By school, Seoul National University was highest at 36.6%. Of its 3,775 freshmen, 1,381 were from Seoul. Yonsei University had 1,358 out of 4,525 (30.0%), and Korea University had 1,598 out of 5,175 (30.9%) from Seoul. Notably, Korea University rose from 29.1% in the 2024 academic year to 30.88% in the 2025 academic year, up 1.78 percentage points (p), entering the 30% range.
By contrast, only 5,817 freshmen were from small and midsize cities and eup-myeon areas. In percentage terms, students from small and midsize cities made up 31.9% and those from eup-myeon areas 11.3%, lower than the national averages by 9.4 percentage points and 2.0 percentage points, respectively. By school, Yonsei University was lowest, with 31.1% from small and midsize cities and 10.4% from eup-myeon areas. Seoul National University posted 32.0% and 12.1%, and Korea University 32.4% and 11.5%.
There were also large gaps between Seo-Yeon-Go and other universities in terms of the high schools entrants attended. Among freshmen at four-year universities nationwide, 73.42% came from general high schools, but the figure for Seo-Yeon-Go was only 58.3%. For these schools, the next most common backgrounds after general high schools were autonomous private high schools (12.1%), foreign language/international high schools (10.1%), science high schools (2.2%), and science gifted schools (0.7%).