Students prepare to take the national university entrance exam at a school in Seoul, South Korea, Nov. 14, 2024. Photo by AFP
Nearly 2,500 students have dropped out of Seoul National, Yonsei, and Korea University this year, the highest in 18 years, as more young people abandon elite campuses to chase medical careers.
Government data released in late August show dropout numbers jumped 17% from last year. Korea University recorded the most with 1,054, followed by Yonsei with 942 and Seoul National with 48, Korea Herald reported. The majority of withdrawals came from natural sciences and humanities majors.
The exodus is closely linked to the government’s expansion of medical school quotas. Last year, authorities allowed 40 universities to admit around 5,000 medical students, up by 2,000 from previous years, to address doctor shortages in a rapidly aging society. That policy shift has fueled intense competition, with many students opting to quit even South Korea’s most prestigious schools to focus on retaking entrance exams.
The phenomenon is not new, but the scale is striking. In 2022, nearly 1,900 students from the three universities dropped out, according to Jongro Academy, a major cram school. By 2023, more than a quarter of top-ranked college entrance exam scorers rejected offers from Seoul National, Yonsei and Korea University to pursue medicine instead. At Seoul National alone, 225 freshmen quit in 2023, triple the number in 2019, most of them from STEM fields.
“The number of students from Seoul National University, Yonsei University, and Korea University dropped out significantly due to the expansion of the medical school recruitment quota in the 2025 academic year,” said Jongro Academy CEO Lim Sung Ho, the Maeil Business Newspaper reported.
The pressure is reinforced at home. A survey by the Korea Employment Information Service found that one in five elementary and secondary students said they hoped to study medicine, reflecting strong parental encouragement. Doctors remain among the most respected and highest-paid professionals in South Korea, making the path attractive despite the risk of multiple exam failures.
