Why have university admission scores not been announced?

INCREASE TIME AND NUMBER OF VIRTUAL FILTERING

Yesterday (August 20), the Ministry of Education and Training sent an official dispatch to universities and colleges (hereinafter referred to as universities) nationwide regarding the adjustment of the admission and virtual filtering plan for 2025. Accordingly, the time for organizing admission and processing admission requests on the system will be extended by 2 days and 4 more virtual filtering times, bringing the total number of virtual filtering times to 10 (the original plan only ran 6 times). The last virtual filtering time on the system will end at 12:30 on August 22. The Ministry of Education and Training noted: "Training institutions are requested not to announce admission scores before the last virtual filtering time on the system".

According to the Ministry of Education and Training, the reason for extending the admission period and increasing the number of virtual filtering times is because universities need time to do some tasks required by the Ministry, in order to ensure accurate, fair and objective admission results. Specifically, schools must carefully review all data, admission methods, and situations in the context of many candidate data being used for admission to ensure that no candidates are missed or incorrectly identified during the admission process; and limit the occurrence of handling errors during the admission process. At the same time, schools must carefully calculate options and propose appropriate virtual ratios to avoid creating a large virtual number, affecting the admission sources of other universities as well as enrolling students beyond the target and beyond the training capacity of the school.

PHOTO: DAO NGOC THACH

The Ministry of Education and Training stated the reason why schools need to implement the above requirements: "In 2025, the number of candidates registering for university and college admission will be higher, which is also the first year that colleges will participate in the admission process; this year, there will be no early admission, all admission methods will be considered in the first round."

According to the initial plan of the Ministry of Education and Training, from August 17 to 20, the general admission system will conduct virtual filtering 6 times. This is a process to ensure that each candidate is only admitted to a single wish (NV), thereby limiting the situation of "virtual admission" and helping schools implement the admission plan conveniently and accurately. After 5:00 p.m. on August 20, universities across the country will begin to announce the first round of admission scores (standard scores), the deadline for announcement is before 5:00 p.m. on August 22.

The Ministry of Education and Training said that although the virtual filtering time is now longer than expected, the next steps in the admission process (announcing admission scores, admission results and confirmation of admission) will continue to be implemented according to the original plan.

PHOTO: NHAT THINH

T HAVE A PROBLEM FROM THE STARTUP

According to Thanh Nien Newspaper's investigation, the reason the Ministry of Education and Training decided to extend the time and increase the number of virtual filtering sessions stems from the instability of the Northern recruitment group (XTMB).

The group has been active since 2016, with Hanoi University of Science and Technology as the host. Initially, it had 8 members, and the number of members increased each year. This year, the group has 65 participating universities, most of which are from Quang Binh (old) and above. Only 3 universities are not participating in the group: Thai Nguyen University, Vietnam National University of Agriculture, and Hanoi National University of Education.

The first problem began to appear when the Ministry of Education and Training required the whole country to train (on August 5, 6, 7) to run virtual filtering on simulated data before running the official virtual filtering. This is a new point compared to previous years, because this year the Ministry of Education and Training required schools to perform many complicated operations in the admission process (for example, converting equivalent scores). During these days, the XTMB group did not run virtual filtering once, but did not explain the reason to the group members. The irony is that because they are members of the XTMB group, the schools are not granted the right to access the common system by the Ministry of Education and Training.

A technical officer in charge of the group (an officer of Hanoi University of Science and Technology) explained that the delay was because the group had to wait for all 65 member schools to upload information before it could run the test. Furthermore, the virtual filtering training plan of the Ministry of Education and Training is only for schools outside the group, and the training does not have to be on the date specified by the Ministry, but the group can continue to do it until it actually runs.

But on August 17, when the entire system nationwide ran the first real virtual filtering, the XTMB group still could not run it even once. From the second beat (the evening of August 17), the group was able to push data to the system for the first time. In the following virtual filtering runs, the XTMB group could not always push the data up in time. According to many admissions experts, this was the reason why the benchmark scores of southern schools "danced" during the first two days of virtual filtering. On August 18, some schools in the group began to worry and asked the Ministry of Education and Training to extend the admission review period.

NEED TO BE PUBLIC AND TRANSPARENT

An admissions officer at a northern university shared: "Big schools like Hanoi University of Science and Technology, National Economics University, Foreign Trade University... are very affected, because the standard score only needs to change by 0.25 points to make a difference of thousands of quotas. Meanwhile, those schools are under great pressure to not exceed their quota, and no school wants to miss the quota."

According to some technical staff of the universities in the group, the group's virtual filtering software has to process a large amount of data many times larger than in previous years, while the group's ambition is too great, so it is "powerless". The host unit (Hanoi University of Science and Technology) wants to create a complete, shared admission software, member schools only need to upload their data to the group's system. After the system runs, the data is returned to each member school, the schools can immediately determine the standard score plan for each major code of their school (where the number of virtual admitted students is low). The goal is to expect the standard scores of all major codes of member schools to remain stable after many virtual filterings.

However, the above mechanism turns the XTMB group into a giant "university", with approximately half a million PhDs, with about 3 - 4 million employees. Although there are no statistics on the number of major codes, it can be estimated to be up to thousands. For example, Hanoi University of Science and Technology has 65 major codes, National Economics University has 73 major codes, Hanoi University of Industry has 62 major codes... The number of "variables" affecting the increase and decrease of the standard scores of schools is very large and diverse. Particularly with IELTS certificates, some schools apply the bonus point policy, some schools convert...

Photo: Dao Ngoc Thach

In addition, according to this year's regulations of the Ministry of Education and Training, all universities must follow the general admission schedule on the system, virtual filtering starts from August 17, with all methods (this year there is no early admission). When registering for admission, candidates only need to show 3 pieces of information: NV order, admission code, university code (with the admission code that the candidate wants to register for NV). All the remaining work in the admission process is up to the universities. The responsibility of the universities is to consider correctly, to consider all the candidates' abilities according to what has been announced.

The problem is that after receiving feedback from the schools, Thanh Nien Newspaper asked, the leaders of Hanoi University of Science and Technology confirmed that everything is still going according to plan. An admissions officer of another university in the XTMB group was upset: "We sympathize with the unit hosting the group because designing a good admissions software in a short time is very difficult, especially in the context that this year the Ministry of Education and Training has many new regulations on admission. In addition, the number of employees has almost doubled compared to previous years. The problem is that member schools need to share information, to be responsible. But the member schools can only sit and wait, their stomachs burning like fire, and the representative of the hosting unit often does not answer the concerns of the members."