The grade cutoffs for first-year high school students in the October 2026 National Joint Academic Evaluation (October mock exam) have been released. According to data posted on the EBSi website on the 20th, the cutoffs for both Korean and math were lower than last year. The grade cutoffs, standard scores, and percentile criteria by section are summarized below.

■ Korean: Grade 1 Cutoff at 83 Points, Down 8 Points from Last Year

The raw score cutoff for Grade 1 in the Korean section for first-year high school students is 83 points. Grade 2 was set at 73 points and Grade 3 at 64 points. The standard scores are 137 for Grade 1, 126 for Grade 2, and 117 for Grade 3, with percentiles of 96, 89, and 77, respectively.

Compared with last year's cutoffs, the decline is pronounced. Last year's Grade 1 raw score cutoff for Korean was 91 points, but this year it dropped 8 points to 83. Grade 2 fell from 81 to 73, and Grade 3 from 72 to 64, each down 8 points.

■ Math: Grade 1 Cutoff at 80 Points, Grades 2 and 3 Down Slightly

The Grade 1 raw score cutoff for math is 80 points, Grade 2 is 69 points, and Grade 3 is 56 points. The standard scores are 139 for Grade 1, 128 for Grade 2, and 115 for Grade 3, with percentiles of 95, 89, and 77, respectively.

Math raw score cutoffs also declined compared with last year. Last year's Grade 1 cutoff was 88 points, but this year it fell 8 points to 80. Grade 2 dropped 4 points from 73 to 69, and Grade 3 dropped 2 points from 58 to 56.

■ Korean Average 47.06 Points vs. Math Average 40.21 Points

The difference between the two sections is also evident in the average scores. The Korean average was 47.06 points with a standard deviation of 19.61. Math showed an average of 40.21 points and a standard deviation of 20.62. The Korean average is 6.85 points higher than that of math.

Based on this year's released cutoffs, the Grade 1 raw score for Korean is 3 points higher than for math. However, since the score distributions differ by subject, it is difficult to determine the difficulty of the exam based on raw score differences alone.

This October National Joint Academic Evaluation was administered by the Gyeonggi Provincial Office of Education. First-year high school students can use the cutoffs posted on EBSi as a reference to see which grade their self-graded results fall into. In particular, given the differences between last year's cutoffs and this year's data, students should examine their achievement levels by subject rather than simply comparing scores.

Below are the grade cutoffs for the first-year high school October mock exam posted on the EBSi website.