Those were the "brain-racking" days.

"Yesterday afternoon, a parent came to the counseling room and sat with us all afternoon. After meeting directly with the subject teacher and carefully considering the options, we encouraged the mother and child to go home and reconsider changing their preferences. To date, the family has decided to keep Huynh Thuc Khang High School as their first choice, as originally registered," shared Ms. Dang Thi Sen, Deputy Principal of Hung Dung Secondary School, regarding cases of parents requesting to change their child's preferences.

Since June 8th, the admissions counseling office at Hung Dung Secondary School (Vinh City) has been constantly busy with parents and students seeking advice on changing their children's college application preferences. This morning alone, the parents seeking advice all had children with relatively high scores, some even above 24 or 25 points.

The parent of a 9th-grade student said that even though their son scored 25 points on the three exam subjects, the family is still not confident about registering him for his first choice at Huynh Thuc Khang High School. "I'm afraid he might miscalculate. Moreover, the average score of candidates at this school is very high, so I'm worried he won't have enough points."

By the end of this morning, 127 out of 397 ninth-grade students registered to take the tenth-grade entrance exam at Hung Dung High School had come to the school with their parents to change their preferences. Of these, only two students changed their preferences from lower-ranked schools to Huynh Thuc Khang High School.

The remaining students all changed their preferences to schools that were lower in ranking than when they initially registered for the exam.

After nearly five days of directly working with the school's admissions counseling team, Ms. Dang Thi Sen, the school's Vice Principal, said that those were truly five "stressful" days.

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My parent said she lost 2kg because her child only scored 24 points, a "precarious" score between passing and failing at Huynh Thuc Khang High School. Many other parents, even though their children's exam scores were quite good, are still uneasy because of conflicting information. The longer the application deadline lasts, the more stressed parents become as they have to think things through.

Ms. Dang Thi Sen - Vice Principal of Hung Dung Secondary School

Observations at Hung Dung Secondary School also show that those who change their preferences are students who are on the borderline between passing and failing. For example, many students applying to Huynh Thuc Khang High School are not confident if they score between 24 and 24.5 points. Students applying to Ha Huy Tap High School or Le Viet Thuat High School, if their scores are currently between 21 and 22 points, are requesting to transfer to schools in suburban areas.

Reverse wave

Ms. Nguyen Thi Thuan and her daughter were among the first parents to arrive at Quang Trung Secondary School (Hung Nguyen district) this morning (June 11th). Her daughter took three subjects for the 10th grade entrance exam and is expected to score 18 points – a score that would be unsafe if she registered Thai Lao High School as her first choice. "We have decided to put Le Hong Phong High School as her first choice. In addition, we will also change her second and third choices to give her more opportunities to be admitted. Only if she fails all her other choices will we consider private schools," this parent stated.

Tuition fees and long distances are major concerns for parents when deciding to change their children's school preferences. Meanwhile, this year's 10th-grade entrance exam is considered more difficult than in previous years, with a high degree of differentiation, making it challenging to determine the passing scores. This is also why parents are deciding to change their children's preferences, even though it may cause inconvenience in terms of transportation and drop-off.

At Quang Trung Secondary School in Hung Nguyen district, 200 students registered to take the entrance exam for 10th grade this year, but by this morning (June 11th), more than 100 students had come to the school to request a change of their preferences.

Ms. Nguyen Thi Cam Tu, homeroom teacher of class 9D, said: "More than half of the students in our class have changed their first choice from Thai Lao High School to schools such as Pham Hong Thai High School, Le Hong Phong High School, or Kim Lien High School in Nam Dan district. Meanwhile, only one student who took the exam at Nam Dan 2 High School requested to switch back to Thai Lao High School in Hung Nguyen town. This change is in line with the family's wishes and also reflects the students' actual exam performance. Most of the students who requested to change their choice scored below 20 points."

Quang Trung Secondary School is located in Hung Dao commune (Hung Nguyen district), only about 2km from Thai Lao High School. For many years, it has been the school that most students in the school registered for as their first choice. However, for the past two years, admission to this school has become difficult, with more than 100 students from Vinh City registering to take the entrance exam each year, and that number continues to increase after the Department of Education and Training allowed candidates to change their preferences after completing the exam.

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I think the policy of changing preferences will create more opportunities for candidates, and even those with very low test scores will have a chance to get into public schools. However, in a rather unique area like our school, the registration process is quite difficult for students because they have to compete with a large number of candidates from Vinh City – where they have superior learning conditions and abilities. Therefore, during the counseling process for students and parents, we must be very careful to ensure that students do not lose their opportunities. The number one goal is for students to get into public schools to alleviate some of the financial burden on parents later on.

Ms. Dang Thi An - Principal of Quang Trung Secondary School - Hung Nguyen

It is difficult to predict the acceptance rate.

"Parents and students should carefully consider changing their preferences for 10th grade to avoid situations where some places have too many students and others too few," is the information recently updated by Cua Lo High School on its official website, four days after students were allowed to change their preferences for the 10th grade entrance exam.

The warning was issued after the school received numerous reports, including many students who, fearing higher admission scores, had requested to transfer their applications to other schools. However, the number of applications transferred from other schools was not as high as the number transferred out.

According to Principal Nguyen Hong Hai: "Before the 10th grade entrance exam, our school had 96 students remaining. However, in the past five days, more than 60 applications have been withdrawn, leaving only over 20. We are not worried about a shortage of students, but we regret that students with high scores withdraw their applications and transfer to other schools, causing them to lose their opportunity."

In contrast to Cua Lo High School, many suburban schools such as Thai Lao High School and Nghi Loc 3 High School anticipate a sudden surge in the number of students transferring to their schools. Therefore, competition will intensify, and the expected cut-off scores may also increase compared to previous years.

With hundreds of candidates expected to change their preferences after June 11th (the last day to change preferences), the picture of 10th grade admissions in Nghe An will see many changes, and the competition ratios between schools will also adjust significantly.

Inevitably, the competition ratio will increase for lower-ranked schools and those in suburban areas. Conversely, the number of students applying for first-choice admission to central and top-ranked schools will decrease.

The "reverse trend" will likely make the 2024 10th grade entrance exam even more unpredictable, and the results remain an "unknown quantity."