SK: students sitting Suneung, world’s hardest exam for college entrance
Students in South Korea are sitting the college entrance exam, the Suneung, a grueling eight-hour marathon.
The stakes are really high, with students feeling the pressure to perform well to secure university placements, jobs, and even future relationships.
It is a crisp November afternoon and South Korea’s famous crimson autumn foliage is on full display as the large crowd heads towards Jogyesa Temple in the busy district of Jongno, central Seoul.
Every year around this time, parents and grandparents visit this historic temple to pray for their children and grandchildren who will be taking the infamously high-pressured Suneung college entrance exam.
This particular crowd follows the monks in prayer outside the temple; inside the temple another group finishes the final day of their 100-day Suneung prayer regime.
The length of the ritual reflects the magnitude of the test, which occurs nationwide on November 18 every year and is officially known as the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT).
During the eight-hour exam, all students will be given a score of 1 to 9 (with 9 being the highest) on each of the core subjects: Korean, mathematics, English, Korean history; and the subordinate subjects of social science, science, vocational studies and either a second foreign language or Chinese characters.
On these scores, much of the students’ lives will depend – from what university they attend to their job, income and even romantic prospects.
SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES