Livin' the Dream: The Big Test Day

In Korea, high school students take a gigantic test near the end of their final year of high school. They call it the SAT in English but it is not the SAT. It's similar in that the test is required to get into college, but this test is a way, way bigger deal that the American SAT. Students study for months for this test. During the school year they stay at school until 11:00 PM studying every day. They come in on weekends to study. They stop doing club activities because they need the time to study. And about a month before the test, they stop classes completely in order to study. All day the students sit in a room in rows of desks, studying for this big exam.

It's exhausting to watch.

But the week before the exam, leading up to everything, was fascinating for me to see. The entire school went into panic mode. Students cleaned the entire building from top to bottom. A good luck banner was put in the study room. The sound system was tested. Students were sent home early so as not to dirty up the clean school. And on the day of the test nobody came to school.

On test day, I had heard that students and teachers stood outside the school gate cheering students on, wishing them luck for their test. Since we have nothing like this in America I had to see what it was like. I woke up early and went down to the school to see what was happening. I saw teachers outside cheering on students, Moms handing out cups of tea and a snack for the day of, younger students holding up good luck signs, pastors and community members giving out good luck goodie bags, and police cars everywhere. The teachers were especially cute because they took a bunch of pictures of the kids as they walked it. Like they were their own children!

You might have noticed that I mentioned police cars earlier. That was not a typo. This test is so big that on the day of, if a student cannot get to the test for some reason, they can call the police and will be escorted to the testing site by an officer. This is education being taken seriously. I've also heard that planes are rerouted so as not to fly over schools and disturb the test. Intense stuff here.

All in all I was impressed by the day. I think it's cool that Korea cares so much on the day of. And while I think that the intensive studying might be a bit much, I like that people support the students before the big test.

Here are pictures of everything out front, courtesy of one of my co-teachers.