University "floor score": 15, college: 12

On the afternoon of July 28, the council for building the threshold score to ensure input quality of the Ministry of Education and Training decided on 15 points for all university admission combinations (including traditional exam groups A, A1, B, C, D) and 12 points for college admission combinations.

According to the Ministry of Education and Training, the whole country has over 726,000 candidates taking the exam at the exam clusters chaired by universities, equivalent to 70% of the total number of candidates nationwide taking the national high school exam. This is also the number of candidates who can participate in university and college admissions based on the results of this exam. With the characteristics of this year's admissions, in addition to the database of candidates' exam scores and the national quota (except for the quota of schools with their own admission plans), the Ministry of Education and Training must apply technical solutions to eliminate virtual candidates (because each candidate registers for many different admission combinations), considering the number of surplus candidates from 1.2 - 1.8 depending on each exam combination to decide on the minimum score threshold to ensure input quality for the university and college system.

Single threshold

“In previous years, there were only five traditional exam groups, but this year there are about 15 popular exam subject combinations that many schools use, not to mention some other combinations that are applied by a few schools. Determining a single score threshold for all exam subject combinations is an important improvement, creating favorable conditions for admission and ensuring overall quality,” said Deputy Minister of Education and Training Bui Van Ga after a meeting on the minimum score threshold to ensure input quality.

According to Mr. Ga, the council chose an intermediate score threshold of all combinations, because there are combinations where the average score is up to 18, but there are also combinations at 14 - 15 points.

“If we choose too many thresholds for each combination, it will be complicated, confusing, and unnecessary. In fact, schools will consider admission from high to low until the quota is full, so any threshold level will not affect candidates too much,” Mr. Ga emphasized.

Mr. Tran Van Nghia - Deputy Director of the Department of Testing and Education Quality Assessment, Ministry of Education and Training - said: in 2015, the total university enrollment target at schools nationwide is about 400,000.

Of these, there are about 350,000 enrollment quotas for schools that use the results of the national high school exam for admission, and about 50,000 quotas for schools that have their own enrollment plans, considering high school academic results. Accordingly, this "floor score" is applied in the admission of 350,000 quotas at schools that use the results of the national high school exam for admission.

Speaking with Tuoi Tre , Dr. Nguyen Duc Nghia, vice director of Ho Chi Minh City National University, also commented that this is the first year that there are many combinations of exam subjects for admission, but there is only one minimum score threshold to ensure quality, not divided into many different score levels corresponding to different combinations as before.

“This is also the first year that the university entrance exam score has been reached at 15 points, 1-2 points higher than previous years. Hopefully, with this score, the minimum input quality of schools across the country will be improved,” said Dr. Nghia.

Nearly 200,000 candidates failed the university entrance exam

Dr. Nguyen Duc Nghia said that the technical solution of the Ministry of Education and Training this year has completely solved the problem of fake candidates. When calculating the data to build the above threshold score, candidates, even if they register for many different combinations, will only be counted once for admission.

Therefore, the number of candidates used as the basis for establishing the threshold score is accurate. This could not be solved in previous years when candidates took the exam many times, each time with different exam results.

Responding to Tuoi Tre 's concerns about establishing a single "floor score", while the score distribution of exam subjects has a clear difference, and exam subject combinations with low results may encounter difficulties, Deputy Minister Bui Van Ga said: The Ministry of Education and Training has compiled the exam results of candidates and clearly sees that the number of candidates achieving scores above the threshold of 15 points for university and 12 points for college is high.

Accordingly, with this “floor score”, there are more than 530,000 candidates with at least one combination with a total score equal to or higher than 15 points. Compared to the university admission quota, this number of candidates is 1.52 times higher. Therefore, there is no need to worry too much about schools lacking recruitment sources.

However, with a minimum threshold of 15 points to be eligible for university admission, about 27% of candidates registering for university and college admission do not meet the threshold for university admission.

Deputy Minister Bui Van Ga also added: according to statistics for each subject, the reasonable score to calculate the floor score ranges from 14 to 18 points. The Council for establishing the minimum score to ensure quality has decided on an intermediate score within the above range, to ensure feasibility for admission in all groups.

However, speaking with Tuoi Tre , Dr. Nguyen Duc Nghia also shared that the Ministry of Education and Training only considered the exam results data of candidates nationwide to calculate the number of candidates exceeding the minimum score threshold.

But in reality, it is difficult to accurately calculate the ability of candidates to move between regions. For example, candidates in Ho Chi Minh City do not want to move to universities in the Mekong Delta, candidates in Hanoi do not move to universities in the Northern mountainous region...

Therefore, the possibility of a lack of recruitment resources may also occur for some schools in disadvantaged areas that lack appeal.

“The Ministry of Education and Training has issued regulations that schools in the “three Western” regions (Northwest, Central Highlands, and Southwest) are allowed to consider admission with a minimum score 1 point lower than the national minimum score, in order to create conditions for schools to enroll students and ensure the requirements for training human resources for disadvantaged areas,” said Dr. Nghia.