When the education ministry introduced a new rule that no longer requires costly and stressful college and university entrance examinations, both parents and students took a deep sigh of relief.

Under the ministry’s current regulations, high school graduates use their graduation exam scores to apply for admission to university, instead of having to sit in university entrance exams following torturous graduation tests.

However, what has unfolded in the first round of registrations with colleges and universities in the country in the past week is more like a mess. The confused and rudderless students have been racing around to find schools that fit their scores.

In previous years, after the results of their university examination exams and the minimum points required for university entrance were announced, students immediately knew where to go.

But it is different this year as chaos has been seen at almost all universities, with throngs of students running around submitting and withdrawing their applications for university entrance just like headless chickens.

A majority of more than one million high school students passed the national exams held early last month. They had applied for university admissions in the first round from August 1 to 20.

In previous years high school graduates picked their favorite universities in order of priority before taking university entrance exams. Nonetheless, this year students apply for admissions to universities after national exam results come out.

At first blush, people thought this was a breakthrough reform as it could help students cut cost, time and stress thanks to the exemption of university entrance exams which mostly took place in HCMC and Hanoi, which compelled exam takers from different parts of the country to travel to the country’s two biggest cities. After the first round of registrations for university admissions, which ended on August 20, a lot of anxious students are still up in the air about whether they are admitted or not while those students knowing that they are out of the admission grade ranges have broken down in tears.  

As reported by local media, the projected admission grades, especially at leading institutions like HCMC University of Natural Sciences, Banking University of HCMC, and HCMC University of Medicine and Pharmacy, steadily rose towards the end of the first admission round due to a huge number of late registrations, forcing students to take back their files in droves to switch to other universities.

Students had 20 days to carefully research and choose universities suitable for their scores and file for admission after collecting sufficient data like number of applicants, scores and applicant rankings. Nevertheless, things turned out to be not as simple as expected. Students rushed to withdraw their files due to an unexpected surge in tentative admission grades at top universities.

For instance, the temporary admission score at HCMC University of Medicine and Pharmacy is 27.75. Students whose scores are equivalent to or slightly higher that must have been in boiling water as they are in the danger zone. As Thanh Nien reports, parents of those students came to the university every day despite living outside HCMC as they were afraid other students with higher scores registering with this school would push their children out of the admission grade range.

According to Associate Professor Nguyen Ngoc Khoi at the university’s academic department, if new candidates with higher scores submitted their applications, those near the bottom of the list might be kicked out.

Parents have complained about difficulties and risks when applying for university admission this way since the temporary admission grades at their favorite universities strongly fluctuated and tended to rise near the end of the first admission round. Many students and their parents had to come to universities early waiting for their turns to submit or withdraw applications.

Dr. Nguyen Duc Minh, head of the academic department at Industrial University of HCMC, told news site VnExpress on August 20 was the final day of the first admission round, so those whose scores were lower than those projected by universities had to withdraw and submit their applications elsewhere the same day.

According to experts, admission information given by universities was not clear or available for quick reference. Students found little or no information on the websites of universities.

A lack of preparations on the part of the Ministry of Education and Training was also to blame. “The ministry thought admission information would be made widely available. However, not all parents and students, especially those in remote areas, had timely admission updates,” a source from a university based in HCMC is cited by Thanh Nien as saying. The ministry’s software program has not worked as well as expected, making it hard for universities to process data.

University admission reforms are encouraged but the reform this year pushed a large number of students to bet on an uncertain outcome.