In 2008, SSU started test of essay writing to select Soongsilians. On January 8th, regular applicants took the 2 hour essay test to enter SSU. The results of test reflect 10 percent of students’total scores.

Baek Do-hyeong, the vice chairman of Question Developemnt Committee and philosophy professor, talked about the purpose of the essay test. He said that he set a high value on creativity and openness of students and kept that in mind when he developed the questions.

Go Seung-won, chief of the Admissions team, said that “regular” application scheme was used to attract students who had good scores of College Scholastic Aptitude Test (CSAT). Even though this essay test constituted 10 percent of the total score, it actually affected the total score less than 1 percent point.

However, it seemed to play quite a big role on deciding success and failure. It was because the Ministry of Education and Human Resources made the CSAT authorities display only the ‘grade number’ students get, not the raw score. There were a lot of students having the same CSAT score. So, even 1 percent could make difference.
He added, the essay test didn’t make up a large part of the score for ‘regular’applicants but it accounts for 30 percent of the total score for ‘early’ applicants. He emphasized that the Admissions department of SSU has two distinctive evaluating formats for selecting students, ‘regular application scheme’ and ‘early
application scheme’and essay writing.

Students who applied to Colleges of Liberal Art, Social Science, Economics and Business took different essay tests from students who applied to College of Natural Science or Engineering. The first question of both tests was about ‘love and marriage’. Students were required to show their ideas about the relation between love and marriage through the context presented. The other two questions Liberal Art applicants got were about documentary history. The students who applied to Natural Science solved mathematical and scientific problems.