The second high school equivalency examination of 2026 was held on 11 August. The question that follows every sitting is the same: if I passed, when do I apply to university? The short answer is that the calendar is tight. Results are published on 28 August, and applications for the 2027 susi (early admission) round open on 7 September. That leaves roughly ten days in between. What you prepare in those ten days decides whether you can file a complete application at all.

What comes out on 28 August is the pass or fail

Results are published on 28 August through each metropolitan and provincial office of education. The Busan Metropolitan Office of Education has announced 10am on that day. Release times differ between offices, so check against the notice issued by the office where you sat the exam.

One thing to note: seeing your pass on a web page is not something you can submit. What universities want is a document. A screenshot is not a document.

The pass certificate and the score certificate are two different things

Equivalency exam candidates normally need two documents for university applications, and they serve different purposes.

• Certificate of passing — proof that you hold high school graduation equivalency. This is the document that establishes your eligibility to apply.
• Score certificate — the document listing your marks by subject. Required by any admission track that converts your results into an academic score.

They are issued through separate requests. Even where a university's guide lists only the certificate of passing, a track that converts subject scores may also require the score certificate, so read the required-documents list in the admissions guide literally, word for word.

The eligibility rules for the exam itself, along with the pass criteria and the subject-carryover system, are set out in you cannot sit the high school equivalency exam straight after withdrawing.

Susi applications open on 7 September

The application window set by the Korean Council for University Education for the 2027 susi round runs from 7 September to 11 September. Here is where parents most often go wrong. Not every university accepts applications for all five days. Each university picks at least three days inside that window.

So University A might accept from 7 to 9 September and University B from 9 to 11 September. You have to check university by university when each one opens, and write it into a table.

Every year someone reasons that the deadline is 11 September and everything can be filed on the last day, then discovers a university that already closed. Applications are also filed through agency sites rather than university homepages, with their own rules on fee refunds — that is covered in susi applications are filed on agency sites, not university websites.

Susi is 80.3% of the intake

According to the 2027 admissions plan published by the Korean Council for University Education, susi accounts for 277,583 places out of a total four-year university intake of 345,717 — 80.3%. Only about one place in five is left for the regular jeongsi round.

For an equivalency exam candidate the implication is blunt. Skipping susi and betting on jeongsi alone means competing for only 20% of the available places. Even with strong CSAT preparation, it is worth putting susi options on the table.

The problem of having no school record

The biggest obstacle facing equivalency exam candidates is that there is no school record (haksaengbu). The comprehensive admissions track is built around reading and evaluating exactly that document.

Universities handle this with a school record substitute form. It is intended for applicants without a domestic school record — equivalency exam candidates and overseas high school graduates. On the form you describe activities undertaken during a period corresponding to the years you would have been in high school, with content comparable to what a school record would contain.

This is where the ten days start to matter. The substitute form is not a document you can produce in a single evening from memory. It asks for dates as well as content, so start now: list the volunteering, study, reading and work-experience activities you did while preparing for the exam, in chronological order. Both the format and whether the form is compulsory or optional vary by university, so check each admissions guide separately.

The six-application limit applies to you too

Sitting the equivalency exam does not buy you extra applications. The six susi applications limit is unchanged, and so is the rule that a susi offer blocks you from jeongsi whether or not you enrol. That structure is set out in the six-susi, three-jeongsi application limits.

So the decision to make in these ten days is not "where should I apply" but "how do I split six cards". Start by settling how many go to tracks with a minimum CSAT requirement and how many to tracks without one.

If you passed only some subjects

The exam has a subject-carryover system: subjects in which you cleared the threshold are exempt at the next sitting. If you did not reach a full pass this time, you are not eligible to apply in this susi round. The realistic move is to prepare for the next sitting and rebuild the plan around applying a year later.

The main risk in that situation is haste. If you are still deciding whether to leave school at all, note first that there is a required process before a withdrawal form can be filed — see the school withdrawal deliberation period.

A ten-day plan

28 August (results day) — check your result on the website of the office of education where you sat the exam, then request the certificate of passing and the score certificate the same day.
29-31 August — check the required-documents list in the admissions guide of each target university, and tabulate which three or more days each one accepts applications.
1-4 September — draft the school record substitute form with dates and content. Decide how the six applications split by whether a minimum CSAT requirement applies.
5-6 September — register and complete identity verification on the application agency sites in advance, and prepare your photo file.
7-11 September — submit within each university's own window. Do not trust the final hour of the closing day; file a day early.

This article is based on the 2026 second-round equivalency examination notices issued by the metropolitan and provincial offices of education (held 11 August, results published 28 August) and the Korean Council for University Education 2027 admissions plan (susi applications 7-11 September, at least three days per university, 277,583 susi places out of a total 345,717, or 80.3%), together with the school record substitute form guidance in university susi admissions guides, all as of August 2026. Result release times and certificate issuance procedures vary by office of education, and required documents and application windows vary by university. Confirm everything against the notice from the office of education where you sat the exam and the admissions guide of the university you are applying to.