3 Applications Advised to Be Canceled After Applying Based on Competition Rates... "Unfairness" Controversy Persists

[Anchor]
 
Out of the cases where applicants failed to submit their early admission college applications due to a system crash, 354 applications have finally completed additional submission. The Ministry of Education has recommended that the respective universities cancel 3 applications submitted during the extended application period after checking the early admission competition rates announced at 6:00 PM.

This is reporter Park Seyong.

[Reporter]

On September 11, as the servers of early admission application agencies crashed, a total of 100 universities extended their application deadlines by one hour to 7:00 PM.

Among them, 17 universities publicly disclosed their competition rates during this extended period.

The core of the controversy is that applying after seeing this information gives an unfair advantage over other applicants.

The Ministry of Education investigated 39 applications submitted to the 17 universities past 6:00 PM.

As a result, it was confirmed that 3 cases involved applications submitted after checking the disclosed competition rates.

The Ministry of Education recommended that the universities cancel those applications.

The ministry stated that while the remaining 36 cases might have also checked competition rates in advance through methods other than the website, it is difficult to verify.

[Song Geun-hyun / Director General for University Policy, Ministry of Education: For the remaining 36 cases, no such records remain in the system. We cannot rule out the possibility that they found a way to check those competition rates through a third-party route, but since the Ministry of Education cannot verify those parts...] 

A total of 1,588 relief applications were filed by those who failed to properly submit their applications due to the system outage.

Out of those, 414 cases with connection logs and other evidence from the time of the outage were recognized as eligible for relief, and 354 of them completed additional submission.

The 60 cases that did not complete additional submission are presumed to have given up after seeing the final competition rates, which could also fuel controversy over fairness.

Some test-takers and parents have announced plans to hold a rally in front of the National Assembly, claiming that only those who submitted their applications in advance are at a disadvantage.

(Photo: Yonhap News)
(Reported by Lee Jae-young | Video by Kim Jong-mi | Graphics by Hwang Se-yeon)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.