AFP: S.Korea holds breath as students sit college entrance exam

AFP: S.Korea holds breath as students sit college entrance exam

This story isn't about the SAT, but the article shows the how important a college-entrance exam can be...


By Park Chan-Kyong (AFP)

SEOUL — Flights were delayed, rush hour rescheduled and military exercises halted as hundreds of thousands of young South Koreans on Thursday sat a college entrance exam seen as crucial to their careers.

The stock market and private companies in the education-obsessed nation opened late to ease traffic congestion as students headed for test centres, with police on call to escort latecomers.

The test weighs heavily on students' careers in a society where colleges and universities focus closely on its results when choosing applicants. Attendance at a prestigious alma mater is crucial in obtaining a top job.

Extra buses and subway trains were laid on to take students to the test and a variety of noise control measures were imposed in the crowded nation.

The transport ministry said landings and takeoffs were banned during an English listening test in the morning and another in the afternoon, affecting a total of 118 flights.

Drivers of vehicles and trains were told not to sound horns during the listening test.

The military was ordered to suspend firing exercises and traffic was halted within 200 metres (660 feet) of each of the test centres.

For fear that the trip might cause traffic congestion, Prime Minister Kim Hwang-Sik delayed his departure for a ceremony in the southern provincial city of Gwangyang.

More than 668,000 students took the day-long standardised College Scholastic Ability Test at 1,206 centres nationwide, the education ministry said, with the absentee rate rising slightly from last year to six percent.

The date was pushed back a week because of the November 11-12 G20 summit in Seoul.

CSAT day is nerve-racking not only for students but for their parents, who crowded churches and Buddhist temples to pray for good results.

"I feel as if the past few days were longer than the 12 years that I spent financing my son's schooling," Kim, a 45-year-old parent, was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency.

"At a Buddhist temple near my house, I've been engaged in 100 days of prayer for my son."

At a high school on the southern island of Jeju, teachers and students taking the exam performed a traditional shamanistic ritual. They knelt and touched the ground with their foreheads before a table spread with rice cake, fruit and boiled pig's head, Yonhap said.

Department stores cashed in on the anxiety, selling gift sets for students composed of rice cakes and rice candies. Superstition has it that sticky rice cakes help students cling on to their knowledge.

Newspapers published pages advising students how to psych up for the exam -- and advising mothers how to fill their children's lunch boxes on test day.

"Avoid meat and other greasy food," Chosun Ilbo said, recommending tofu or fish to prevent drowsiness.

To prevent cheating, electronic devices such as mobile phones, digital cameras, MP3 players and electronic calculators were banned.

Cheaters are expelled from the once-a-year exam and banned from sitting it the following year.

Education professor Kim Dal-Hyo of Dong-A University in Busan said the annual fever stems from the nation's obsession with academic background and with links formed through schools and universities.

"Parents spend fortunes on tutoring their children to send them to good schools," he told AFP. "Unless the highly ossified stratification of colleges is resolved, this annual nationwide craze will never disappear."


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Caution with College Board question of the day

Be cautious with explanations from College Board. Sometimes the website doesn't give a full explanation of what's wrong with the question.
Check out this question...

A By the time Mitzie and B myself got to the box office, C all of the tickets for the show had already D been sold. E No error
Answer Choices

* (A)
* (B)
* (C)
* (D)
* (E)

Here's the College Board explanation:

The error in this sentence occurs at (B), where there is improper pronoun use. The reflexive pronoun “myself” is used incorrectly. The first-person singular pronoun “I” is needed instead so that the sentence communicates clearly that two people “got to the box office.” (“Mitzie...got to the box office” and “I got to the box office”)

But it doesn't help much to say that "myself" is wrong so that the sentence would communicate clearly that two people got to the box office.
The reason "myself" is wrong is that the reflexive (myself, yourself, himself, herself, ourselves, themselves) is used when the person performing the action (the subject) is the same as the person on whom the action is performed (the direct object).

Correct:
I shave myself.
He saw himself.
They shave themselves.

If the subject and direct object are not the same, don't use the reflexive.

Correct:
I saw him.
The barber shaved me. (not myself)
By the time I dragged myself out of bed...
I was so tired my mother had to pull me out of bed.

Wrong:
By the time Mitzie and myself got to the box office...
By the time I dragged me out of bed...
I was so tired my mother had to pull myself out of bed.

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