Abolishing the Personal Statement, will it be an appropriate measure?

December 11, 2022

Yoonsuh Jung, Dasom Im

A student is reviewing her personal statement and portfolio before the college interview

SEOUL - For students applying for the university after 2022, submission of the personal statement will be abolished due to ‘Measures to Strengthen the Fairness of the College Entrance System’.

These measures were announced on November 28th, 2019 and one of the measures, abolishing the submission of the personal statement, will be fully implemented next year. Through a survey, the Ministry of Education found that students and parents recognized the Comprehensive Student Record Screening (학생부 종합전형) as an unfair screening. The perception that external factors, such as high school type and parent ability, are more influential than the student's effort, has spread which led to a distrust of the evaluation results, the Ministry of Education added.

College students cheered for a college prep student

Parents are anxious as their child leaves for the college interview

The personal statement was a document for entrance exams required mainly by the Comprehensive Student Record Screening. It evaluates students based on their overall school performance such as grades, awards, creative experience activities, career paths, readings, and volunteer work. However, the scope of consideration for college entrance has changed constantly by the Ministry of Education.

As this year’s admission process is coming to an end, the next ones to experience the admission are showing anxiety about the change.

Parents of pre-seniors are gathering for a college prep conference

A consulting academy for Early Admission

A parent of a pre-senior commented that she has been going to lots of college prep conferences and consulting academies to get as much information as possible. Although abolishing the submission of the personal statement lifted lots of economic burdens, she said she tends to depend more on private education as no one including the students and the parents knows how to prepare for the rapid change in the examination system.

The high school teacher, Jun Won Bal also showed anxiety about the change. “There will be no compensation of school grades if there is no personal statement,” he said, “The school record represents the student in 3rd person view, while the personal statement is the only way students can express themselves in 1st person view”. He also mentioned that because the measures by the Ministry of Education are prohibiting showing various activities such as after-school activities and reading activities to the university, along with abolishing personal statements, students are spending a single-standard school life, only focusing on school scores.

The head of the Institute for Admissions Strategy Hong Seong-Pyo expressed skepticism over the abolition. He said, “There is a high possibility that students will not be able to get the school records that express them accurately. Therefore, the supplement for the school record was a personal statement written by the students.”

Park Jung-Sun, a head admissions officer at Yonsei University, said, "We won’t be able to know what process the students went through to get the grades without the personal statement." He was also doubtful about whether the purpose of abolition, improving fairness, will be realized properly. While some universities already abolished personal statements, Yonsei University has maintained the personal statement in the Comprehensive Student Record Screening until this year.

However, there are also positive views on this change. In the past five years, there have been several issues related to fairness in college admissions, such as the twin sisters at Sookmyung Girls' High School incident and the former Minister of Justice Cho Kuk’s daughter incident. In many cases was found that external factors other than the student’s ability have affected the entrance examination. According to the survey by the Ministry of Education, students and parents had no choice but to feel doubt. The reduction of the Comprehensive Student Record Screening ratio in the admission and the abolition of the personal statement was one of the measures for fairness.

A high school 2nd-year student is studying for the final exam

Some students were also very positive about the measure, saying that the pressure to write the personal statement is lifted. A 2nd-year student, Kim Min-Seo commented, “I was against the personal statement from the beginning”. She said that she felt sorry for the seniors in her school when she saw them having a hard time writing their personal statements when they had to study for CSAT.

However, the students, teachers, and parents all asked the same question: what to prepare for admission as components to evaluate students like personal statements are decreasing.

A room for preparing and rehearsing the college interview

The answers collected all emphasized class participation that would be recorded in the school record and college interviews. Yonsei University's admissions office said they planned to focus on academic performance and extra-class activities. In addition, the influence of the result of college interviews will be greater as it will be the only direct method for students to express themselves within the entrance examination system.

A table explaining the criteria for college admission

“The education system in Korea changes according to the regime.” According to Hong Seong-Pyo, the head of the Institute for Admissions Strategy, the previous regime focused on fairness but the current regime seems to place a greater emphasis on excellence. In the ‘2028 Forum on the Reorganization of College Entrance System,’ the experts already discussed the return of the personal statement submission.