University entrance exam: What can competition ratio tell?

LookAtVietnam – Students have been advised not to choose study branches based on competition ratios, since competition ratios do not accurately indicate the number of actual examinees.

The HCM City University of Industry receives applications from students

It was just three days before the first university entrance exam, July 4, when N.T.Q.N, a student of Hoang Hoa Tham High School in HCM City, called local newspaper Tuoi tre, asking for advice about whether she should take the exam to enter the HCM Medical University.

 

N described herself as a student with good learning capacity. However, N. was still wondering if she should take exam to enter the university as she found out that medical universities always require high marks on the university entrance exam.

 

N read in the newspaper that 3,270 students registered to take the exam to enter the university, while only 50 students will be enrolled, which means that one student will have to compete with 65.4 other students — a very high competition ratio. And so N was frightened.

 

N has been advised by experts that she should not overly focus on the competition ratio when making a decision. Reality has shown that universities that have high competition ratios always have high ratios of ‘virtual examinees’.

 

The HCM City Banking University is an example. In 2008, when the finance and banking study branch was ‘hot’, nearly 25,000 students registered to take exams for the university, and the competition ratio was 1:11. The high competition ratio frightened many students. Meanwhile, less than 16,000 registered students turned up at the exam rooms, which meant that nearly 10,000 examinees decided to give up the game.

 

The number of students registering to take exams to enter the HCM City University of Industry has increased sharply this year. The figure of 50,000 applications and the competition ratio of 1:16 have made many students hesitant. However, in fact, this is one of the universities that traditionally does not have a high percentage of actual examinees.

 

In 2007, the university reportedly had 46,000 students register to take the exams. But in fact, only 68 percent of the registered students sat for them. The same situation occurred in 2008. Only 26,000 students out of 37,000 registered students, or 70 percent, sat for the exams.

 

In general, most students choose universities based on the marks the universities required in previous years. The study branches which require low marks always attract many examinees, and vice versa. Moreover, good students always choose ‘hot’ study branches to follow.

 

In HCM City, the University of Technical Education and University of Architecture always have high percentages of actual examinees

 

Analysts say that the universities that have high percentages of examinees are mostly the universities which have concrete study branches, i.e. the names of the study branches tell students which jobs they will get in the future. This proves to be the tendency of choosing study branches in 2009.

 

For example, the study branches of business administration, hotel management, civil engineering and industries prove to attract students much more than the branches of labour relations or applied mathematics.

 

VietNamNet/TT