Korea's top seat of learning, Seoul National University, is more than ever a bastion for the metropolitan elite.
SNU had the biggest proportion of freshmen who went to high schools in the Seoul metropolitan area and surrounding Gyeonggi Province this year, and one out of 10 came from the affluent Gangnam and Seocho districts. But opportunities for students from other parts of the country lag well behind the levels of other universities.
Main opposition Minjoo Party lawmaker Seo Dong-yong analyzed admissions data from 2018 until this year and found that 10.4 percent of 3,396 SNU freshmen graduated from high schools in Gangnam and Seocho, although they account for only 2.1 percent of all high school seniors nationwide. Two-thirds of new students at SNU graduated from high schools in other areas in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province, the highest level since 2018.
Preference for applicants from the metropolitan elite was clearly seen in the admissions process. Each high school across the country gets to recommend two students for SNU admission under a "balanced regional selection" scheme for paper-based assessment without the formal entrance exam. Yet 50.7 percent out of 659 SNU students admitted through the scheme this year also came from high schools in the Seoul metropolitan area, even though they account for only 35 percent of high schools across the country.
The main reason is the huge gap in the quality of public education between the capital region and the provinces, while most top crammers that prepare students for admission to top universities are also in Seoul.
These crammers have years of experience sending their charges to the top universities. Lee Man-ki of Uway Institute of Educational Evolution said, "Parents with high incomes tend to send their kids to high schools in Gangnam, which is also home to private crammers that specialize in sending students to the top universities."
But SNU also has fewer openings for underprivileged students than other universities. A measly five percent of new admissions or just 176 students were admitted into SNU this year under the special admissions scheme for the underprivileged, far below the average 19.6 percent at other public universities.
SNU claims this trend was due to public universities outside of Seoul having a greater pool of local high school seniors to choose from. But according to Jongro Academy, a private crammer in Seoul, SNU's ratio of underprivileged students also falls below other top universities in Seoul, such as Korea University (10 percent) and Yonsei University (8.4 percent).
The Ministry of Education will require all universities starting in 2024 to have underprivileged students account for more than 10 percent of total admissions.
