Last Year's CSAT Easier Than June Mock Test
Admissions Industry Also Says "Moderate Difficulty, Lacks Discriminatory Power"
Regarding the difficulty level of the English section in the September mock exam this year, EBS (Korea Educational Broadcasting System) and the admissions industry evaluated that this test was easier than last year's CSAT and the June mock exam this year.
On the 4th, EBS analyzed the English section of the 2025 College Scholastic Ability Test September mock exam conducted nationwide, stating, "It appears to have been easier than last year's CSAT and this year's June mock exam."
Kim Ye-ryeong, a teacher at Daewon Foreign Language High School affiliated with EBS, said in a briefing on the same day, "We excluded passages that were too abstract and difficult to understand even when translated into Korean, and included questions that require careful reading and accurate understanding of the passages across various types to secure overall discriminative power." The EBS question linkage rate was identified as 53.3%.
On the 4th, examinees were 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@
Among the questions, blank inference questions number 31 and 34 were considered challenging. Additionally, question 36 on the order of the text and question 39 on sentence insertion were analyzed as somewhat difficult.
The admissions industry also analyzed that the difficulty level of this test was moderate. Jongro Academy stated, "It was set much easier than last year's actual CSAT," adding, "It is practically difficult to expect English discriminative power among top-tier and high-tier students."
Daesung Academy also said, "Compared to the 2024 CSAT and the 2025 June mock exam, the topics of the passages were not difficult, and the attractiveness of the incorrect answer choices was low, so it is analyzed as having an easy difficulty level," and added, "The blank inference and indirect writing types, which were difficult in the June mock exam, were also set relatively easily, so it is expected that the perceived difficulty for test takers has decreased."
Daesung Academy identified blank inference question 34 and sentence insertion question 39 as high-difficulty questions.
Megastudy also commented, "Last year's CSAT had challenging questions on order and sentence insertion, but this September mock exam clearly presented clues, making the questions not difficult to solve."
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