Early College Application System Failure... Ministry of Education to Announce Relief Measures Today

Investigation into Uway Apply System Failure
Relief Measures for Incomplete Applicants to Be Announced on the 13th
Ongoing Debate over Fairness

The Ministry of Education will provide relief measures for students who were unable to complete their early university admission applications for the 2027 academic year due to a system failure in the application submission process. The ministry plans to investigate the causes and handling of the system outage at Uway Apply, the application agency, and will also conduct a thorough review of the entire college application system.

On the 13th, the Ministry of Education announced that it is preparing relief measures to ensure that applicants who could not complete their early admission applications due to the system failure do not suffer any disadvantages. The ministry will provide detailed instructions on the specific procedures and methods for relief later today.

Yonhap News Agency

The Ministry of Education stated, “We take the inconvenience and concern caused to students and parents by the Uway Apply application system failure very seriously,” adding, “We will conduct a thorough investigation into the causes, actual situation, and responses regarding the application submission system.”

The ministry continued, “To prevent similar incidents in the future, we will implement recurrence prevention measures and carry out a comprehensive review of the application system. Together with the Korean Council for University Education (KCUE), we are swiftly preparing relief measures to support applicants who could not complete their submissions due to the system failure, and we will provide detailed guidance on the specific procedures and methods on the 13th.”

According to the education sector, on the last day of early admission for the 2027 academic year, a server failure occurred at Uway Apply, the agency responsible for application submissions, at around 5:50 PM on September 11, 10 minutes before the deadline. Some applicants were unable to complete their applications and payment successfully. The server was restored around 6:20 PM, approximately 30 minutes later.

To ensure applicants’ opportunities were protected and to prevent disadvantages due to the server outage, the KCUE extended the original application deadline for universities that had set it at 6:00 PM on September 11 by one hour, until 7:00 PM.

However, this extension of the submission period is likely to trigger a debate about fairness among applicants.

Applicants typically monitor the competitiveness of up to six universities— the maximum number allowed for early admissions— right up to the final moments before the deadline. After intense calculation and last-minute decision-making, some universities published their final admission rates at 6:00 PM; with the deadline extended until 7:00 PM, applicants submitting during that period were able to reference these final rates before applying. This has led to complaints from those who submitted early, as they would now be at a disadvantage compared to those who could strategize based on the newly available data.

If additional relief is provided for those unable to complete submissions due to the system failure, the final admission rates for each university and department may change once again.

The Ministry of Education plans to announce detailed relief procedures and methods later today for students who could not submit their applications due to the system issue.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.