Will top universities face a shortage of applicants right from the first round?

Although the cutoff scores have increased this year, with the new examination method, the leaders of top universities are still confident in recruiting enough students...

According to regulations from the Ministry of Education and Training, the cut-off scores for the first round of admissions to universities and colleges will be announced before 5 PM on August 1st.

Currently, candidates are very interested in the cut-off scores for each major at universities conducting the first round of admissions (mostly top-tier universities).

Regarding this year's admission scores, many university leaders predict that top-tier universities will see an increase of 1 to 2.5 points, while mid-tier universities are unlikely to experience significant increases. With these scores, will these universities be able to fill their quotas in the first round of admissions, or will they still face shortfalls like in 2016?

This year's admissions method has reduced the number of fictitious candidates.

Commenting on this issue, Associate Professor Dr. Do Van Dung, Rector of Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology and Education, said that the 2016 admission method is that in the first phase, candidates can register for a maximum of 2 universities. Each university can register for a maximum of 2 majors (or groups of majors) according to the priority order ranked from 1 to 2.

Furthermore, because candidates can register for two universities, with two preferences for each, many high-scoring students register for top-tier universities as their second choice, while their first choice is mostly police or military universities. These are universities where students do not have to pay tuition fees and are guaranteed employment after graduation.

Although the cutoff scores have increased this year, with the new examination method, leaders of top universities are still confident in recruiting enough students (illustrative image).

Therefore, in 2016, there was still a possibility of many "phantom" applicants, making it difficult for universities to filter out those who would not officially enroll. This was one of the reasons why, for the first time in many years, many top universities failed to fill their quotas in the first round of admissions.

This year, although candidates can register for an unlimited number of preferences, they can only be admitted to one school they applied to, ranked from highest to lowest.

A new development this year is that the Ministry of Education and Training is supporting universities in filtering out fraudulent applicants using a common software system. It is expected that this year, the number of fraudulent applicants will only be about 10% of the total number of applicants. Therefore, it is likely that top universities will be able to recruit enough students in the first round of admissions.

The pool of applicants remains abundant.

This year, 866,000 candidates nationwide registered to take the National High School Graduation Examination, but only 75% of them used the results of this exam to apply for admission to universities and colleges.

Many believe that students are no longer solely focused on getting into university at all costs, but rather prioritize what they can learn to secure employment after graduation. Therefore, universities may not necessarily fill all their slots in the first round of admissions.

However, Mr. Nguyen Phong Dien, Head of the Training Department of Hanoi University of Science and Technology, believes that changes in students' perceptions regarding career choices and universities may impact this year's university and college admissions process. Nevertheless, for top-tier universities, the enrollment quota is still less than the number of applicants, so the situation where universities like Hanoi University of Science and Technology and Hanoi Medical University lack enrollment quotas in the first round of admissions, as happened in 2016, is unlikely to occur.

According to projections, top universities will announce their admission cutoff scores for each major as early as August 31st. However, according to some education experts, to accurately assess the university admissions process, we must wait until the second round of admissions is completed to know the true admissions results of universities (including top-tier universities).

According to VOV