Over 210,000 university quotas unfilled in Turkey this year

ISTANBUL

Over half of the students who entered Turkey’s national university exam this year did not fill out the necessary application form indicating which university they wished to be placed in, according to the student selection and placement results announced late on Aug. 8.

Of the 2.3 million who took the exam over two stages, first in March and then in June, only 994,766 made the necessary application to be considered as a university candidate based on their scores, which took over the period from July 18 to July 26. 

This year, the Student Selection and Placement Center (ÖSYM) applied the university entrance exams in two stages, the first on March 12 under the name “YGS” and the second on June 10-18 with five different “LYS” exams.

After the exam results were announced, the ÖSYM asked applicants to hand in a form listing the universities they wanted to be placed in. But according to ÖSYM statistics revealed on Aug. 8, only 994,766 applicants filled out the relevant forms and gave them in, with the remainder delaying their chances of entering university until next year, or perhaps never entering.  

Of the 994,766 applicants, 825,244 earned a spot at a university, including the faculties of Open University (the courses of which can be taken independentlyat home). 

As some of the candidates could not be placed at anywhere they listed on their application forms, the ÖSYM said some 214,430 quotas assigned for the faculty departments across universities for the 2017-2018 education year remained unfilled.

The ÖSYM also revealed statistics breaking down the data based on which high school the candidate graduated from.

Of those graduates who earned a place in a four-year undergraduate program, 138,602 were out of the 396,681 graduates from Anatolian high schools, 12,149 were out of the 22,619 graduates from high schools for sciences, 3,905 were out of the 6,619 graduates from a private high school for sciences, and 40,346 were out of the 222,295 graduates from religious vocational high schools (“imam hatip”).

The results revealed that the success of the graduates from private high schools for sciences reached 60 percent, whereas it stayed at only 20 percent for the religious vocational high schools.

The candidates who earned a place for enrollment need to apply to the relevant university between Aug. 14-18. If they do not collect the necessary document and undertake in the application process, they will lose their enrollment spot.