Many people have heard that from the 2028 college admission cycle, high school grades will move from nine levels to five, but there is surprisingly little explanation of how the grade actually appears on a report card. Today's second-year high school students are the first group under the 2022 revised curriculum, while current third-years are still graded on nine levels. This article uses the Ministry of Education's reform plan and the 2026 high school academic record management guidelines to explain how the grades are split and which subjects get no rank grade at all.

The framework the 2028 admissions reform sets for school grades

The 2028 college admission reform plan that the Ministry of Education finalized and announced replaces the current nine-grade system with five grades and applies the same evaluation method in the first, second and third years of high school. It also said that recording both absolute-evaluation and relative-evaluation results is meant to guard against grade inflation. For the CSAT, elective subjects in Korean, mathematics, and social and science inquiry are removed, and advanced mathematics (Calculus II and Geometry) is dropped from the exam scope.

Who gets five grades first: the order by school year

The Ministry's "Guidelines for Writing and Managing School Records" state that changes tied to the 2022 revised curriculum apply in order: first-year high school students from March 1, 2025, second-years from March 1, 2026, and third-years from March 1, 2027. As of this year (2026), first- and second-years get five grades and third-years get nine grades under the earlier curriculum. The 2026 academic record guidelines of the education offices also carry a five-grade table for the 2022 curriculum and a separate nine-grade table for the 2015 curriculum. In other words, it is a year in which report cards differ by grade level within the same school.

The grade boundaries are cumulative 10%, 34%, 66% and 90%

The cumulative rank ratios set by the guidelines for the five grades are Grade 1 up to 10%, Grade 2 over 10% to 34%, Grade 3 over 34% to 66%, Grade 4 over 66% to 90%, and Grade 5 over 90% to 100%. The nine-grade table in the same guidelines gives Grade 1 only the top 4%, so the threshold for Grade 1 has widened from 4% to 10%. In exchange, the share of students who end up in Grade 4 or below in a given course is fixed at 34%.

With 178 students enrolled, the grades hold 18, 43, 56, 43 and 18 students

The number of students per grade is found by multiplying the number of enrolled students by the cumulative ratio, rounding, and taking the difference from the previous grade. The guidelines' example is a course with 178 students. The cumulative counts are 17.80, 60.52, 117.48, 160.20 and 178; after rounding they are 18, 61, 117, 160 and 178, so the numbers per grade are 18, 43, 56, 43 and 18. Calculating the same way for a course with 60 students gives 6, 14, 20, 14 and 6. In an elective with few students, a single rank can swing a grade by a wide margin.

When tied students sit on a boundary, there may be no Grade 1 at all

When tied students fall on a grade boundary, the guidelines assign grades using the mid-rank percentage, which applies a mid-rank. In the guidelines' example, if 19 students tie for first in a course of 96 students, all 19 get Grade 2 and no student gets Grade 1. Conversely, in a course of 120 students with 1 student in first and 15 tied for second, all 16 get Grade 1, which exceeds the Grade 1 quota of 12. The tie-breaking method is set in each school's academic record regulations, so check the school's rules first for courses where performance assessment scores are close.

Some subjects have no grade on the report card

Not every course is graded on five levels. According to the guidelines, the nine social and science convergence electives (Travel Geography, Modern World Explored Through History, Social Issues Inquiry, Finance and Economic Life, Ethical Issues Inquiry, Climate Change and a Sustainable World, History and Culture of Science, Climate Change and Environmental Ecology, and Convergence Science Inquiry) record only the achievement level and its distribution, and no rank grade is recorded. Science Inquiry Experiments and PE and arts courses record only the achievement level, and liberal arts courses record only completion (P). Such courses are not included in a grade average, so you should know this distinction before choosing electives.

Courses with five or fewer students, and joint curriculum courses

Even for a course that produces a rank grade, if five or fewer students are enrolled, the rank grade cell may hold either "rank grade" or "." and the same course within the same admission-year curriculum must use one method consistently. Courses taken through a joint curriculum or online school are scored, but the rank grade cell gets ".", and courses taken outside school keep only the subject, course and credit. The differences between these routes are covered separately in three ways to take courses your school does not offer.

What to check now

First, ask the school which curriculum your child falls under (the 2022 revised curriculum means five grades). Second, when choosing electives, find out whether the course produces a rank grade and roughly how many students will take it. For the subjects universities recommend by track, see recommended subjects by track and Seoul National University's 2028 major-linked course guidance together. Third, how a university converts school grades and how it judges the CSAT minimum differ by admission guide, so each has to be checked individually, as in how to calculate the CSAT minimum requirement. This article is general information summarizing the Ministry's reform plan and the guidelines; school rules and each university's way of counting may differ, so please confirm with the official materials of the school and university concerned.