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Comment by qrian | Hacker News Reader

They don't have it as a selection criteria. Some context:

South Korean educational system recently had a crackdown on private academy(hakwon), and in their infinite wisdom, decided to ban every non-public educational experiences (including things like international olympiad awards) when applying for the university. Which means that the only thing you can submit in the application is SAT scores, some public education awards, and personal essays. Naturally it became the fight of who can write the most compelling personal essays for the university, and people started to let their children 'write' academic papers so that they can write stories to claim their interest and impetus on the application in hopes of impressing the judges.

So it is not a selection criteria but it helped rich & powerful people get an edge in the university application.

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As a South Korean, I think most of the things described here are not exactly true, but I might be wrong. Could you provide any source?

AFAIK the history of Korean educational system is the history of Hakwon superiority in adapting to new rules. A hakwon crackdown was something the gov did in 80s and failed miserably.

Also there are now very diverse channels for univ entrance. I would think some channels still allow many of those banned criteria. Maybe they cannot be used in some prestigious public ones?

I am also a Korean and wrote this on top of my head, though I do have to admit that it has been some time since I've been a student involved in it.

I'm mostly talking about 학종 where you submit 자소서 and 생기부(학생부?), and that there's been a ban on writing non-public education related experience on the latter. As for the claim that it being part of the government crackdown an hakwon, [here](https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20100407138500004) is a source I found where they directly mention it. Ctrl+f for 사교육.

> decided to ban every non-public educational experiences (including things like international olympiad awards)

How is an International Science Olympiad non-public?

It is run by a non-profit as opposed to a government. Granted the SAT would also qualify as non-public so that just confuses things further.

Sorry I meant the Korean one (CSAT?) which is indeed run by the government. That's interesting that American SAT is not run by the government directly.

As is common in the United States, we have a number of pseudo-monopolies on certain things that are run by mismanaged “nonprofits”. In this case that’s the College Board and the ETS.

From what I understand, much of the actual operations of CB / ETS are contracted out to Pearson Education (massive educational publisher).

It would be a bit odd for the American SAT to be run by the federal government when ACT vs SAT is so regional: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SAT-ACT-Preference-Map.sv...

I think the ACT largely exists because the SAT is not handled by the federal government.

I mean, at that point you are straight up lying... why not just write an essay and claim all of that without actually getting your name put on a real paper.

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