The most notable new point in this year's enrollment is the establishment of a common floor threshold, limiting the number of aspirations, tightening bonus points and standardizing admission methods.
If in 2025, candidates can register many aspirations, maximize the advantages of bonus points or follow a separate method, then in 2026, choices must be more focused.
In short, the door to university this year is not narrowed, but it has become much easier than in previous years.
Previously, many students could finish the exam and then think about it, or choose a safe strategy by registering as many aspirations as possible to increase the probability of admission.
This year, when the number of aspirations is limited, leading to each choice becoming a risky decision, there will no longer be room for emotional aspiration registration.
This both helps candidates and parents reduce effort, time, and money, and helps reduce the situation of virtual admission. When candidates register too many aspirations as before, one person can pass many schools but only enroll in one place, causing schools to continuously call for additional admissions and adjust targets. Restricting aspirations will make enrollment data "cleaner", helping schools be more proactive and accurate in selection.
In particular, having a floor threshold helps eliminate a part of candidates entering universities with too low scores, which has caused much debate in previous years.
Furthermore, limiting bonus points makes the advantages of priority no longer excessively stretched. And reducing the number of admission methods helps limit the situation where each school has a different type, each major has a different calculation method, causing candidates and parents to fall into a "matrix" of information.
The new points in this year's university entrance exam are expected to be an important foundation to improve the quality of admissions. This is something that the Vietnamese higher education system has talked about for many years, but has not always achieved as expected.
However, these new points also come with challenges. Especially, for students who lack information or are not fully counseled on career orientation, having to make early and accurate choices can become real pressure. A wrong decision can significantly narrow the opportunity, because there is no longer a reserve equal to the number of aspirations as before.
For universities, especially those not in the upper group, enrollment may be more difficult in the short term because there is no longer much "room" to receive applications with low scores or many priority points.
But this is also a necessary difficulty for schools to be forced to improve training quality, adjust majors or change their approach to students. A university admission system, and further, levels of education, is only truly superior, giving quality output when it creates pressure for reform and improvement for both learners and training institutions.
