#korean school

Hi! This is Admin Yu. Today’s post will be on the academic grading system of high schools in Korea. I’m a Korean high school student so this topic is something I’m very familiar with.

9등급제 (9-rank system)

9등급제(9-rank system) is the academic grading system of high schools in Korea. The 9-rank system is a relative evaluation system. Students are given ranks from 1(1등급, Rank 1) to 9(9등급, Rank 9) based on students’ relative standing among all others who took the same class that semester.

In one semester, students take two big exams, 중간고사(midterm exam) and 기말고사(final exam), and do 수행평가(performance evaluation) for the classes they are taking. At the end of the semester, the scores of the two exams and performance evaluations are added up for the final score out of 100. Then the ranks are given out based on this score.

Top 4% of students are given 1등급(Rank 1), the next 7% 2등급, the next 12% 3등급, the next 17% 4등급, the next 20% 5등급, the next 17% 6등급, the next 12% 7등급, the next 7% 8등급, the next 4% 9등급. For example, if there are 100 students who take chemistry, the top 4 students will get Rank 1, the next 7 will get Rank 2, and so on.

등급컷(컷 is ‘cut’) refers to the minimum score that can get the rank. For example, if the 1등급컷 for chemistry was 95, the students who got 95 or over get Rank 1, and if the 2등급컷 was 90, students who got score below 95 but over 90 get Rank 2. ‘등급’ is often omitted, so you can say 1등급컷 or just 1컷.

You can see many students asking the teacher for 1컷 after exam is over. Although the real ranks are given by the final score, the exams are often regarded as the most decisive factors. So knowing the 1컷 of the exam score can give you a rough idea of your current position among other peers. 등급컷 of the exam can also tell us about the difficulty of the exam. If the 1컷 is very low, the exam can be regarded as very difficult.

Since only a few can get high ranks, a single mistake can sometimes be critical. Especially if the exam was easy. In schools where education fever is high, if the exam was too easy and too many students got 100, one mistake can drop your rank drastically. And if the number of students who got 100 exceeds the number of students who can get Rank 1, the ranking may start from Rank 2 or even 3. So it’s important to find the balance of difficulty of exams. If the midterm exam was too easy, the final exam is expected to be very hard to meet the difficulty balance.

The same 9-rank system applies to 수능(Korean SAT) as well. Students are given ranks relatively like the 9-rank system in high schools. However, to differentiate the scores, other things like standard score/Z score are used to evaluate the student. For example, 100 and 92 may be the same Rank 1 but their standard score would be different.

I hope this post helped you understand the grading system of high schools in Korea!

-Written and edited by Admin Yu