At the 2025 Higher Education Conference, the Ministry of Education and Training issued survey forms to collect opinions from higher education institutions on 2 contents for the next year's admission season: Eliminate high school transcripts and control the number of applications.
In the content of considering transcripts, the Ministry of Education and Training offers 2 options: Eliminate admission based on transcripts or continue to consider admission based on transcripts.
Considering academic records is a popular admission method of universities, with a high rate of candidates entering the school with about 30-50%. Most schools usually take a score of 3-5 for the semester from grades 10 to 12.
In recent years, many top schools have tended to gradually reduce enrollment targets by this method or completely abandon it due to concerns about input quality. Meanwhile, the group of top schools still prioritizes, reserving most of the quota for this method.
Prof. Dr. Nguyen Tien Thao, Director of the Department of Higher Education (Ministry of Education and Training) said that in 2025, preliminary statistics showed that there were 17 admission methods used by higher education institutions. Of which, the rate of using the high school transcript review method is 42.4%, the number of high school graduation exam scores accounts for 39.1%, while other methods account for 18.5%.
Although the rate of using the method of considering academic records is high, this is a method that causes a lot of controversy.
According to the correlation between high school graduation exam results and transcript scores of 12th graders nationwide announced by the Ministry of Education and Training, the average score of candidates' transcripts is up to 2.26 points higher than the 2025 high school graduation exam scores. Van has the lowest difference - about 0.12 points, while the largest difference is in Industrial Math and Technology.
The average score for the Math exam is 7.03, 2.25 points higher than the exam score. Next is English, when the average score of the high school graduation exam is 1.57 points lower than the transcript.
Ms. Thu Hoai (Kim Ma ward, Hanoi), a parent with a child in grade 11, supports the removal of the admission plan based on high school transcripts because she believes that this method is not really fair.
"There is still a situation where students go to extra classes with teachers to beautify their academic records. Not to mention, the inspection and assessment of students at schools and localities are not uniform" - Ms. Hoai said.
On the university side, Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Thanh Chuong - Chairman of the Board of the University of Transport said that there needs to be a thorough assessment instead of a hasty decision on removing the consideration of high school transcripts because this is an important channel, reflecting the learning results of the entire process at the high school level.
According to Mr. Chuong, depending on the industry and school, each school will have appropriate adjustments. For example, special majors such as Architecture are required to have a talent subject; for many other majors, considering academic records is completely feasible.
"For example, schools can reserve about 2 - 3% of their admission quota for high school transcripts, the rest for other admission methods. In fact, many schools are currently only considering a small percentage of their academic records to open up more opportunities for candidates. Instead of completely eliminating it, there should be an adjustment roadmap, ensuring a balance between admission methods and creating more opportunities for candidates, said Associate Professor, Dr. Nguyen Thanh Chuong.
Dr. Le Viet Khuyen - Vice President of the Association of Vietnamese Universities and Colleges has also repeatedly expressed concern about negativity in admission based on high school transcripts. The reason is that the quality of training at educational institutions in our country is still not uniform, so the scoring for students at each institution is also different. This makes it unreasonable to consider high school transcripts without attaching additional criteria.
"In my opinion, transcript scores should only be a secondary criterion, supplementing the exam scores of the high school graduation exam. At the same time, removing the consideration of academic records does not reduce the opportunity to enter university or disadvantage for candidates" - Dr. Le Viet Khuyen said.
