How to Prepare for Suneung Math: Structure, Scoring, and a 12-Week Plan

The Suneung mathematics section is 30 questions worth 100 points, sat in 100 minutes with no calculator. Every candidate answers the same 22 questions on Mathematics I and II, then 8 more from one chosen elective: Probability and Statistics, Calculus, or Geometry. That structure has been stable since 2022, and the exam on 19 November 2026 is the last time it will ever be used.

This article covers what the paper actually contains, how the relative grading works and why it should change where your revision time goes, how to choose an elective in the final year electives exist, and a 12-week plan aimed at the November 2026 exam.

What the Paper Actually Looks Like

The current paper has four blocks:

Block	Questions	Format	Points
Common (Mathematics I and II)	1 to 15	Multiple choice	50
Common (Mathematics I and II)	16 to 22	Short answer	24
Elective (one of three)	23 to 28	Multiple choice	18
Elective (one of three)	29 to 30	Short answer	8
Total	30		100

Individual questions are worth 2, 3, or 4 points. The short-answer questions take an exact whole number from 0 to 999 marked on a digit grid: no working is read, no partial credit is given, and there are no options to eliminate.

One check worth making before you spend money on prep material: if a book describes multiple choice running to question 21, short answers from 22 to 30, and killer questions at 21, 29, and 30, it is describing the pre-2022 exam. The common-plus-elective paper has had this shape since the 2022 exam year, and material written for the old structure will mistrain your pacing.

November 2026 Is the Last Exam of Its Kind

From the exam sat in November 2027, the electives are gone. Every candidate will take the same maths paper, covering Algebra, Calculus I, and Probability and Statistics. Calculus II and Geometry leave the Suneung entirely.

Two consequences follow for anyone preparing for November 2026.

First, the usual insurance policy is weaker than normal. In an ordinary year, a disappointing result can be retried twelve months later with the same preparation. This cycle, a retake means switching to a different syllabus: the elective you spent months on may not even be examined next year. A large wave of repeat takers is expected precisely because so many students want one more attempt under the current rules. Plan to succeed this time, because carrying your preparation forward is unusually expensive.

Second, the format is completely settled. The exam authority has confirmed that the November 2026 paper keeps the same structure, question counts, and timing as previous years. There is no format risk to hedge against; every past paper since 2022 is a faithful rehearsal.

Relative Grading Changes What a Mistake Costs

The Suneung does not give you a percentage and a pass mark. Your raw score is converted into a standard score, a percentile, and a grade from 1 to 9, all defined by where you sit in the cohort. Grade 1 is the top 4 percent.

Since the November 2023 exam, so-called killer questions have been officially excluded. What that did not do is make the paper easy: question 22 of that first killer-free paper had a reported correct-answer rate of around 1.5 percent. What it did do is redistribute difficulty. Instead of two or three extreme problems at known positions, the paper now spreads its hardness across many 4-point questions in the middle and late sections.

Under relative grading, that redistribution changes what a mistake costs. When most of the cohort clears the routine questions, scores bunch together, and a careless error on an ordinary 4-point question moves your grade as much as an unsolved monster used to. You are no longer mainly competing on whether you can crack one famous problem. You are competing on how rarely you slip on the thirteen 4-point questions everyone has a real chance at.

The preparation consequence: accuracy on mid-difficulty material is worth more than heroics. A revision plan that produces zero avoidable errors on questions 1 to 20 beats one that occasionally solves question 22.

Choosing Your Elective, While Electives Still Exist

The three electives are not equally chosen and are not scored identically. In the November 2025 exam, Probability and Statistics overtook Calculus for the first time, with about 56 percent of candidates against 41 percent, and Geometry took the small remainder. The shift happened because most universities dropped the rule that science and engineering applicants must take Calculus or Geometry.

Two facts should drive the decision:

• Check your target programmes first. Most universities no longer require a specific elective, but a minority still do, or award bonus consideration. This is a five-minute check that outranks every other argument.
• The scoring is not neutral. Standard scores are adjusted by elective cohort, and the adjustment has favoured Calculus takers: in the November 2025 exam the maximum standard score was 139 for Calculus against 137 for Probability and Statistics. The gap is real but small, and it does not survive choosing a subject you are weaker in.

If your targets are indifferent, pick the elective you can score highest in, and pick it early. The elective is only 26 points, and switching late costs common-section revision time, which is where the other 74 points live. That trade is almost never worth it.

Where the Marks Actually Are

Split the paper by difficulty rather than by block and it looks like this: 17 questions worth 2 or 3 points each, 48 points in total, are designed to be quick; 13 questions worth 4 points each, 52 points in total, carry the difficulty and decide grades.

Most students misallocate against that split in two ways.

They over-prepare the elective relative to its weight. The common section is 74 of the 100 points, and the seven 4-point multiple choice questions from 9 to 15 plus the three 4-point short answers from 20 to 22 are 40 of them. That band, not the elective, is where grade boundaries are usually decided.

They under-train arithmetic accuracy. The short-answer format accepts only an exact integer from 0 to 999. A correct method with a slip in the last line scores zero, there is nothing to eliminate, and no examiner reads your reasoning. With no calculator available, clean by-hand computation is not a background skill here; it is directly examined, seven times in the common section alone.

Step 1: Diagnose Before You Drill

Before starting any plan, sit one recent paper cold: 100 minutes, no calculator, no notes, no pausing. Score the common and elective sections separately.

Now classify every lost mark into one of four buckets:

• Concept not understood. You did not know what the question was really asking.
• Method not known. You understood the question but had no route to an answer.
• Method known, execution wrong. You knew what to do and made an error doing it.
• Ran out of time. You never attempted it.

These four require different responses, and conflating them is the most common reason revision plateaus. Concept gaps need reading and explanation, not repetition. Method gaps need worked examples. Execution errors need slow, deliberate practice with checking habits. Time problems need pacing work, not more content. If you drill harder at a concept gap, you will get faster at being confused.

The 12-Week Plan

Two weeks per strand, then two weeks of full papers. Adjust the order so your weakest strand comes first, because the earliest material gets the most total review time.

Weeks 1 to 2: exponential, logarithmic, and trigonometric functions. The function half of Mathematics I. Equation-solving with exponentials and logarithms, graph behaviour, identities, and the sine and cosine rules. These supply reliable mid-paper questions, and fluency here speeds up everything downstream.

Weeks 3 to 4: sequences, limits, and continuity. Sequences from Mathematics I, including arithmetic and geometric progressions and recursively defined sequences, which supply a predictable 4-point short answer. Then limits and continuity from Mathematics II. If limits feel like symbol manipulation rather than an idea, the limits article rebuilds the intuition faster than more drilling.

Weeks 5 to 6: differentiation. Derivatives, tangent lines, monotonicity, extrema, and curve analysis. The hardest common questions, 15 and 22 among them, are usually built from this material, so this is the fortnight that stretches your ceiling. The derivatives article covers the underlying meaning if the rules feel arbitrary.

Weeks 7 to 8: integration. Indefinite and definite integrals, areas between curves, and motion problems. Current papers reward noticing the structure of an integral before computing it, so practise pausing to look before you write.

Weeks 9 to 10: your elective. Whichever of the three you sit, work it at exam depth now, once the common material is consolidated. Questions 29 and 30 are among the hardest on the paper, and they are elective questions, so this fortnight should be dominated by past exam problems rather than notes.

Weeks 11 to 12: full timed papers. One complete paper a week under exam conditions, with the following day spent entirely on review. Do not sit a second paper before you have understood the first.

Across all twelve weeks, keep revisiting earlier strands rather than finishing a topic and abandoning it. Spacing the review is what makes week 2 material still available in week 12, and it is the single highest-return change most students can make to a revision schedule. The spaced repetition article covers how to schedule it without a complicated system.

Exam-Day Pacing

One hundred minutes for 30 questions sounds like three minutes each. It is not, and pacing to the average is the classic mistake. The 17 quick questions should take well under half the time, leaving roughly an hour for the thirteen 4-point questions.

A few habits that protect the budget:

• Bank the 2- and 3-point questions, 1 to 8, 16 to 19, and 23 to 27, briskly and accurately in roughly the first 35 minutes. These 48 points are the floor your grade stands on.
• If any question has taken three minutes with no clear route, mark it and move on. Questions 15, 22, 29, and 30 are the usual time sinks; come back to them once everything bankable is banked.
• On short answers, re-derive the final number once before marking the digit grid. An exact answer format with no partial credit converts every transcription slip into minus 3 or 4 points.
• Reserve the last five minutes for checking marked answers and the grid, not for starting a fresh attack on the hardest remaining question.

The Bottom Line

The Suneung maths paper is 30 questions, 100 points, 100 minutes, no calculator, graded on your position in the cohort, and sitting its final year in the common-plus-elective format before the 2027 redesign removes electives entirely.

Three things carry most of the improvement. Spend your time where the points are, which means the common section and especially its thirteen-question 4-point band, not disproportionately on the elective. Treat arithmetic accuracy as examined content, because the short-answer format converts method-right-answer-wrong into zero. And prepare to succeed this November rather than counting on a retake, because for once, next year's exam is a different exam.