Colleges and universities will give more weight to high school grades in selecting freshman students in 2008 rather than the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT), the Ministry of Education and Resources Development said Thursday.

The ministry announced the change in the college admission system, which is designed to satisfy teachers and parents who have strongly protested discriminatory admissions by six major universities that favored graduates from high schools in affluent southern Seoul.

According to the plan, the CSAT will be categorized into nine grades, which means students within the top 4 percent of the CSAT, or 24,000 students out of 600,000, will receive the top grade. The current system benefits students with higher CSAT points, without any categorization.

School grades, meanwhile, will be categorized from current five grades to nine.

"If the CSAT is more categorized than nine grades, it will bring cutthroat competition between students for better points, which will deteriorate school education," an official of the ministry said. "On the other hand, if it is less categorized, it will barely give universities enough information of the applicant's academic ability."

The ministry is considering offering the CSAT twice a year starting from 2010. Currently, the test is administered only once a year.

The ministry also said that more categorized school grades will lead students to become more enthusiastic about the school curriculum, which will bring a more stabilized school education.

The new high school grading system will reflect extra curriculum activities more than before, such as reading habits, community service and club activities, the ministry said.

Also, curriculums of special high schools such as science high schools and foreign language high schools will be more focused on their specialized subjects than in the past.

The ministry's finalized plan is almost identical to its tentative plan on improving university admissions announced on Aug. 26. The finalized plan came out after several postponements due to the recent controversy over the discriminatory admissions process by some private universities and a series of rallies by parent groups that urged the government to reform the plan and make it more effective to stabilize school education.