EBS and Entrance Exam Industry: "September Mock Exam Korean Was Easier Than Last Year's CSAT and June Mock Exam"

The Entrance Exam Industry Also Says "Easy Questions Make It Hard to Ensure Differentiation"
Warning That Predicting the Difficulty of the CSAT Is Difficult

The first session of the Korean language section of the September mock test for the 2025 College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) has concluded. EBS (Korea Educational Broadcasting System) and the admissions industry evaluated that the difficulty level of this exam was easier than last year's CSAT and this year's June mock test.

On the 4th, EBS commented on the Korean language section of the 2025 CSAT September mock test conducted nationwide, stating, "The overall difficulty is analyzed to be easier compared to the 2024 CSAT and this year's June mock test." Han Byung-hoon, a teacher at Cheonan Jungang High School affiliated with EBS who conducted the explanation briefing that day, said, "The information in the passages was presented relatively explicitly, and the questions were designed so that the choices and passage information clearly correspond, which seems to have been arranged to alleviate the difficulty of time shortage." The EBS question linkage rate was identified as 51.1%.

On the 4th, examinees are preparing for the 'September Mock Test for the 2025 College Scholastic Ability Test' held at Yeouido Girls' High School in Yeongdeungpo-gu, Seoul. Photo by Jinhyung Kang aymsdream@

By question, questions 11 and 16 in the reading section were analyzed to be challenging. The teacher explained, "Question 11 required students to clearly understand the various characteristics of blockchain technology presented in the passage, then grasp the relationships among them, and accurately apply them to specific examples in the choices to derive the answer, which could have felt difficult to students." He added, "Question 16 required understanding the 'Bazhang perspective' and 'psychoanalytic perspective' on the films presented in passages A and B, and analyzing a student's film review based on this, which could also have been challenging for test-takers."

In the speech and writing section, question 40 was identified as a high-difficulty question. The teacher stated, "Question 40, which asked about the appropriateness of the content reflected in the student's reflection in passage B considering the student's conversation in passage A and the participation review presented in the question, was likely burdensome for examinees."

Additionally, question 35 in the language and media section was analyzed to be tricky. He explained, "To analyze the example sentence, one must be able to analyze both the sentence structure and parts of speech simultaneously. Since this is a core concept covered in school grammar, students who have thoroughly studied this should be able to solve it sufficiently."

The admissions industry also evaluated the difficulty of the September mock test Korean language section as easy. Jongro Academy stated, "It was the easiest since the policy to exclude killer questions was applied," and added, "It is expected to be difficult to secure discrimination among top-tier students." They also assessed that there were no difficult questions other than question 16.

Megastudy also said, "Compared to last year's CSAT and the June mock test, it was somewhat straightforward," and "It is expected that students in the field could take the exam without major difficulties." They identified challenging questions as numbers 9 and 11 in reading, 25 in literature, 40 in speech and writing, and 35 to 36 in language and media.

However, there are also forecasts that the difficulty of the CSAT cannot be predicted. Daesung Academy said, "In the 2022 academic year, the top grade cutoff was 82 points in language and media for the June mock test, but the September mock test cutoff was 96 points, and the CSAT was also predicted to be easy. However, the actual CSAT had a first-grade cutoff of 81 points and a perfect score standard score of 149 points, making it one of the toughest CSATs ever." Accordingly, they advised that preparation for the 2025 CSAT should consider the difficulty levels of both the June and September mock tests.

Daesung Academy analyzed that question 35 likely took a considerable amount of time to solve.