29.5 points can still fail your wishes: Admission season of records and confusion

Candidates with 29.5 points can still 'fail'

This year's benchmark scores have many surprises compared to previous predictions, not following the pattern of past years. However, there is also a clear differentiation: hot majors are still pedagogy, information technology, and foreign economics with nearly 30 points.

In 2025, there will be 6 majors at 4 schools that will record the absolute standard score of 30 points, including: Medicine (Military Medical Academy); International Relations ( Military Science Academy); English Pedagogy and Chinese Pedagogy (University of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, Hanoi), English Pedagogy and Chinese Pedagogy (University of Foreign Languages, Hue University).

Close to the absolute score is the History - Geography major of the University of Education , Hanoi National University with a benchmark score of 29.84 points, meaning that candidates must score more than 9.94 points/subject to be admitted. Hanoi Pedagogical University also has a History Pedagogy major (29.06 points), meaning that candidates must score 9.5 points/subject to be admitted.

The University of Information Technology (Ho Chi Minh City National University) has a very high admission score. With the direct admission method and priority admission (30-point scale), the Artificial Intelligence major has a standard score of up to 29.91 points. Other majors of the school have equally high standard scores, all above and below 29 points, including Data Science (29.14 points); Computer Science (28.9 points); Microchip Design (28.8 points).

According to experts' analysis, the group of majors with the highest benchmark scores is still Pedagogy and Language; ranked second is Information Technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI). The group of majors with the third highest benchmark scores is Economics, typically Foreign Trade University has many majors with over 27 points (Logistics, Foreign Economics, E-commerce, etc.).

According to education experts, this year's enrollment rate is high, the score distribution is strongly differentiated compared to previous years, etc. are the main reasons for the prediction that this year's university admission benchmark scores are surprising, not following the rules of past years.

Many problems arise

The 2025 university entrance exam has continuously encountered problems that parents and candidates have not been able to adapt to.

Specifically, there was an error in the publication of information about the subject combination of the University of Social Sciences and Humanities.

Or, for example, Hanoi Capital University announced the admission scores in two announcements, causing confusion among candidates and parents in recent days. Afterwards, the school had to issue an announcement explaining the incident.

In 2025, the Ministry of Education and Training had to announce a 2-day delay in announcing benchmark scores when the number of university admission applications reached more than 7.6 million, causing the system to overload.

In addition, according to many students' feedback, the admission score lookup system of the Ministry of Education and Training and many universities continues to be overloaded, making it impossible for candidates to access the results.

Extremely worried, candidate NKC and his mother said that according to the school's admission score announcement, he had more than enough points to pass the exam, but when looking up, his name was not on the school's admission list. For 3 days, the whole family lived in anxiety.

Commenting on the 2025 enrollment season, Dr. Hoang Ngoc Vinh, former Director of the Department of Vocational Education (Ministry of Education and Training), said: The exam is considered difficult, but the benchmark is extremely high, even with 9.9 points/subject, one can still fail. The reason is not necessarily the exam, but the way the enrollment system is designed and operated.

Firstly, the conversion regulations between many admission methods lack a common standard framework, each school makes its own, so the scores become different and "chaotic".

Second, the phenomenon of concentrating on "hot" majors such as Medicine, Information Technology, and Economics causes the quota to be low but the number of candidates to be too large, creating competitive pressure for every 0.1 point.

Third, the inflation of academic transcript scores and the priority of converting IELTS scores create a great advantage for a group of candidates, while those who take the high school graduation exam in Foreign Language are at a disadvantage, making the standard score picture somewhat distorted.

In addition, candidates are allowed to register for multiple wishes and complex virtual filtering algorithms can slow down the announcement of benchmark scores.

Solutions for the upcoming admissions season

Prof. Dr. Nguyen Dinh Duc (Hanoi National University) said that last year we only considered high school graduation scores, but this year the different methods are all converted to the same equivalent score. This year, many schools that consider transcripts also convert them to a 30-point scale compared to graduation exam scores, ability assessment test scores, thinking assessment scores or SAT scores, etc. To put it bluntly, considering transcripts and converting them like that is beneficial and the average score will be high and there will be a reversal, that's why.

According to Professor Duc, this year, the number of virtual filters has increased, and the nature of increasing the number of virtual filters is to handle technical issues. Every year with the early admission method, schools have all the options and then upload them to the software of the Ministry of Education and Training to filter virtual ones. But this year, the Ministry of Education and Training must handle all the issues of adding points and priority points.

Professor Duc gave an example: the 12+ system - students studying at specialized schools who are required to study before university. In this case, students are given priority in the majors they registered for. Thus, the group had to run a virtual test. The number of candidates was only a few dozen, but the software still had to be revised, updated, and it also took a virtual test. Problems like that show the over-commitment of admission methods in the Ministry of Education and Training's software, leading to the need for more virtual tests," Professor Duc said.

Proposing to avoid the above shortcomings for the next year's admissions, Professor Duc said that, first, the exam should continue to differentiate and differentiate better. Society calls for difficult questions, but we must develop exams that differentiate because this is essentially a 2-in-1 exam, and schools use the results for admissions. The exam needs to be better not only in Math but also in other subjects.

Second, from the Ministry of Education and Training, I think that schools should announce their enrollment plans early, not waiting for the enrollment regulations to come out with plans like every year, which is too passive. On the other hand, enrollment regulations should not be changed frequently but should be kept stable.

“Thirdly, the virtual filtering software must be upgraded and fully implemented, because the current enrollment form is very diverse. Each change is slow and we have to struggle with changes in every detail all day long, so we need to consider it carefully,” Professor Duc emphasized.