* Note that this article is only about local admissions.

What is the answer to the real problem at hand, the issue of the ideal intellectual in this knowledge-based society? In the midst of the controversy we are failing to notice that the issue of providing effective public education is an important matter that deserves our full attention.

Academia and the entire society is filled with controversy regarding the published last June. But what is the answer to the real problem at hand, the issue of the ideal intellectual in this knowledge-based society? How are we to nurture and produce the students who have the potential to be such citizens? In the midst of this controversy we are failing to notice that the issue of providing effective public education is an important matter that deserves our full attention.
Here I will comparatively analyze the published by the Ministry of Education and the published by Seoul National University, then examine the various assertions being made regarding the two.

The Regional Equality Admissions Policy Increases to 30%
Our school seeks diversity in our members in order to advance as a leading producer of information, and in order to achieve this we have adopted specialization as our basic admissions policy, which will help us select students from various backgrounds and with different talents. In the 2008 school year, the fundamental 'variations in policy format' and 'specialization for each policy' systems will stay the same. Therefore the regional equality admissions policy for the fall semester and the current formats of the special talent admissions and regular admissions policies will also remain unchanged, and the number of students admitted for each category will be adjusted accordingly. Especially, the regional equality admissions policy will be increased to 25% in 2007 and 30% in 2008. The ratio of students for the special talent admissions category may differ, but it is expected that the number of admitted students will increase centering around the College of Natural Sciences and the College of Engineering, while the number of students in the College of Humanities and the College of Medicine will stay the same. The result will be that the number of students admitted through regular admissions will decrease to approximately 1/3 of all new students.

Preparation Without Private Tutoring Made Possible
The admission requirements will change for regular admissions. The main points are that while in the past the process was divided into two stages, they will now be combined into one process, the standardization of the 'soo-neung' exam(college scholastic ability test) scores, higher emphasis placed on the essay examination, and the preservation of the current levels of the reflection of the educational curriculum. From these, there is much controversy surrounding the issue of the importance of essays. The essay-type examination that the College of Humanities and the College of Music are currently administering consists of the applicants reading several passages and writing a 2,500 word essay about one argument in 180 minutes. In the 2008 school year, however, most colleges including the College of Humanities and the College of Natural Sciences will begin administering such essay-type examinations and test applicants on an integrated format of subjects based on the high school curriculum(for example: history, social studies, linguistics, literature, philosophy, the arts, and natural sciences for humanities applicants and social sciences, mathematics, and science for natural sciences applicants, etc.). In this integrated essay-type examination, the applicant will not be asked to evaluate whether information regarding a specific professional field is right or wrong, but express their creativity in using their basic knowledge in one field to apply it to another, completely different area of study. In this way, students will be able to prepare for this examination through self-initiated study, reading, and debate instead of relying on expensive private tutoring. The specific question formats are still being discussed, and are expected to be announced in October after the careful consideration of many instructors on campus. A special policy for graduates of special purpose high schools is currently being represented in the special talent admissions policy so is not being considered separately, and the admissions circumstances regulations will be implemented after the legislation of the issues regarding status and salary promoted by the Ministry of Education.

The Realization of the Object of the Ministry of Education's 'College Admissions Policy Reform Plan'
The fundamental direction of our school is to realize the aims of the put forward by the Ministry of Education, including our desire to partly alter the existing admissions policy in order to coincide with the changing atmosphere of college admissions. It seems as though the misunderstandings regarding the advantages and disadvantages of certain schools that arose after this publication have been alleviated, and the standardization of the college entrance examination scores is also in tune with the Ministry of Education's reform plan. The increasing importance of the school transcript is also effective in that it both raises the actual reflection rate of the high school transcript, and increases the number of students admitted based mainly on their transcript. In the regional equality development policy, the high school GPA and transcript of the students have the most importance, and in the special talent admissions policy the transcript is evaluated overall with the main emphasis put on their special talent. On top of this, the number of students admitted on these two admissions policies is expected to skyrocket. Even in the regular admissions policy at which 1/3 of the students are selected, the importance of the high school transcript is not small. In a situation like this, if the regular admissions policy becomes centered around the students' GPAs, the different admission policies will be less distinguishable and high school grades will serve as fetters for the students, providing them with less diverse admissions opportunities. In this way, for students who do not have the best GPA but the possibility to show their potential through a different admissions policy this can become a handicap that may stay with them for life. It is as if a second chance is taken away from those students who have less than perfect grade point averages.

Combined Curriculum Essay-Type Examination Will Contribute to the Normalization of Public Education
The controversy around the combined curriculum essay-type examination was first put forward not because of the specific question types, but because people worried that private education will be further promoted and public education will be laid to waste. The combined curriculum essay-type examination is not centered around testing students on memorized information, but on evaluating them on the comprehensive understanding, analyzation skills, and creativity regarding their high school curriculum. These abilities are all necessary for us as a country to survive in the global competition. SNU is already working toward strengthening the fundamentals of education such as speaking and writing, and the high school curriculum has produced a reading manual centered around the Office of Education in order to strengthen reading education.

Some insist that because the current high school education consists of separate classes according to subject, it is impossible to prepare for the combined curriculum exam and therefore promotes private education. If the high school curriculum is unrelated to the nurturing of creative new talent, we must begin to consider what kind of abilities this separate course system gives to students, what significance teachers have on their students, and whether the separation of classes according to subject is an ideal situation or if it needs to be reformed. The drops of water in the form of separate classes must come together and form a river of intellectual thought, and if the process of this river meeting with the ocean of information can be thought of as the meeting point of secondary education and higher education, then secondary education must help students think from different points of view and express these thoughts clearly and logically. Education must now change from being centered on blind memorization to being centered on voluntary, autonomous studying and intelligent debates in which students can share their thoughtful ideas. In this respect, the combined curriculum essay-type examination will contribute greatly to the Korean educational system finding its proper place.

Autonomy of the Colleges in Choosing Students Must Be Expanded
The problem of private education occurs because many people want the same limited resources, and as we experienced in the past the fundamental solution to this problem is not the reformation of college admissions policies but the insurance of the competitive power of public education. Increasing the importance of high school GPAs is not the only solution toward the normalization of public education. In fact, the expansion of the educational infrastructure, reeducation of instructors, flexible course schedules, and the reformation of class methodology are all possible solutions. If grades are overly emphasized, students may feel pressured to compete excessively with their peers which will lead to an empty classroom environment, and evaluating students from different backgrounds in which there is an academic gap between the schools all based on the same standard will limit the fairness in the admissions process.

We must now take this serious problem of public education one step farther and provide an opportunity to discuss this matter starting with the basics. I anticipate that a change in policy will result from this in which the quality of public education is improved. The problem of reforming college entrance policies has been continuously presented in our country ever since we gained independence, enough to say that our country's history of higher education up to know has been a process for the settlement of admissions policies and systems. However, as we can see from the fact that the admissions policy has been changed 15 times in the last 50 years, frequent changes in the admissions policy has caused students much pressure and confusion, and it would not be an overstatement to say that this has actually promoted the growth of private education. More important than changing the admissions policy itself is taking the time to put in consistent effort to bring about positive results from the inside. Also, if we want to minimize the fear students feel by stabilizing the admissions policy, each university must have autonomous control over the selection of its students, based on diverse standards based on the different educational goals of each major area of study.

Written by Lee Jong Seob, Associate Dean of the Office of Admissions, Professor of the School of Biological Sciences

Translated by SNU PR Office