Admissions 2025: Number of admitted candidates increases, pedagogy and STEM majors flourish

On September 18, Director of the Department of Higher Education (Ministry of Education and Training) Nguyen Tien Thao said: According to statistics as of August 31, the general university admissions for the 2025-2026 school year have basically been completed as planned. The general admission support system has been operating stably, overcoming many shortcomings of previous years.

Students learn about admission information at the counseling booth of Thang Long University. (Photo: THUY QUYNH)

In 2025, the whole country will have a total of 852 thousand candidates registered for the exam, with 7.6 million wishes for more than 4,000 majors and training programs of more than 500 universities and colleges. The entire process, from registration, fee payment, virtual filtering to admission confirmation, is all done online, without errors from the general system.

Particularly in the northern group (chaired by Hanoi University of Science and Technology), which organized a general admission exam for 65 training institutions, the initial admission exam software was overloaded due to the large amount of calculations. In this situation, the Ministry of Education and Training requested to extend the nationwide virtual filtering time by two more days, but still ensured the announcement of admission exam results as planned on August 22, 2025.

The online registration system is open from August 25 to September 2, 3 days longer than expected, to facilitate candidates in completing procedures.

The shortcomings in organizing early admission and dividing the quota between admission methods and combinations of previous years have been basically overcome. The entire admission process this year is transparent, there is no longer an unreasonable difference in benchmark scores between methods and combinations in the same industry and school. Reality has also shown that initial doubts about the necessity, effectiveness and feasibility of the new regulations applied from 2025 have been answered.

Overall enrollment results continue to improve, demonstrating the increasing trust of learners and society in the quality of training. As of September 2, 625,477 candidates had completed enrollment confirmation, an increase of 13.82% compared to 2024; of which, the university sector alone had 613,335 candidates, reaching 52.87% of the total number of candidates taking the high school graduation exam (in 2024 it was 51.3%). Notably, the rate of training institutions recruiting less than 30% of the target was only 6.5%, a sharp decrease compared to 16.4% in 2024.

As of September 2, 625,477 candidates had completed their admission confirmation, an increase of 13.82% compared to 2024; of which, the university sector alone had 613,335 candidates, reaching 52.87% of the total number of candidates taking the high school graduation exam (in 2024 it was 51.3%). Notably, the rate of training institutions recruiting less than 30% of the target was only 6.5%, a sharp decrease compared to 16.4% in 2024.

These figures not only reflect learners' learning needs and labor market requirements, but also confirm the consolidation and increase of learners' confidence in the quality of higher education .

Pedagogical majors, along with key technical majors and strategic technology majors, continue to attract a large number of excellent candidates, especially at top universities. Although the average benchmark score in 2025 is about 3 points lower than in 2024, the benchmark scores between majors and schools are clearly differentiated. A positive signal is that the enrollment results in pedagogical majors and STEM majors have improved significantly.

Notably, out of a total of 74 majors with a benchmark score based on high school graduation exam results of 28/30 or higher, there are up to 50 majors in the pedagogical sector and 17 majors in the key technical group, strategic technology such as computer science , artificial intelligence, semiconductor microchips, control and automation...

According to statistics from the Ministry of Education and Training, university and college admissions in recent years have achieved many positive results, clearly showing a stable and increasingly effective trend.

In 2025, the whole country will have 1,160,033 candidates taking the high school graduation exam; of which, 849,544 candidates registered for admission to training institutions. As a result, 773,167 candidates were admitted and 625,477 candidates completed admission confirmation.

Compared to previous years, the figures show a clear increase. In 2024, the country had 1,071,395 candidates taking the high school graduation exam; of which 733,652 candidates registered for admission, 677,986 candidates were admitted and 549,514 candidates confirmed their enrollment. In 2023, the corresponding figures were 1,002,100 candidates taking the exam, 660,258 registered for admission, 612,283 were admitted and 494,488 confirmed their enrollment.

These figures reflect the efforts of the entire industry in innovating and improving enrollment work, while affirming the trust and choice of students and parents in the university and college education system.

Quynh Nguyen-Le Ha

Source: https://nhandan.vn/tuyen-sinh-nam-2025-so-thi-sinh-nhap-hoc-tang-cac-nganh-su-pham-va-stem-khoi-sac-post908843.html