Career guidance for high school students to choose the right career

Waste because of registering too many wishes

In 2025, out of approximately 850,000 university admission candidates, there will be more than 7.6 million registered wishes. Thus, on average, each candidate will register nearly 9 wishes, an unprecedented high number, far exceeding previous years. In 2024, 2023 and 2022, each candidate will register about 5 wishes on average.

The Ministry of Education and Training reported that the number of candidates with less than 5 wishes was 39.6%, candidates with 10 wishes was 30.9%, over 10 wishes was 29.5%, the number of candidates with over 20 wishes was 6.7%. More specifically, many candidates registered for admission with the number of wishes up to 100, some candidates had over 150 wishes. The spread of candidates' wishes across many different schools and majors, even unrelated to each other, surprised many people. For example, from the application of a candidate with 149 wishes, the majors he registered for were electrical and electronic engineering technology; mechatronic engineering; economic law; logistics and supply chain management...

Rarely, in 2025, a candidate registered up to 231 university and college admission wishes, but the wishes were very little related. For example, this candidate's first wish was to enter the Vietnam Dance Academy. Wishes from 2 to 7 were to enter Hue College of Tourism, from 8 to 11 were to enter Saigon College, and wish 12 was to enter Yen Bai Vocational College. In terms of profession, this candidate registered from engineering, languages, social sciences to economics, arts... Later, this candidate explained that because he asked many relatives to register his wishes on the system of the Ministry of Education and Training, he did not know that the number of wishes was so large.

This year, the total university admission fees nationwide amounted to more than 114 billion VND. Although the Ministry of Education and Training allows unlimited registration of wishes, the lack of consideration in choosing majors and schools has led to many consequences. Candidates can only enroll in one school even if they register dozens of wishes. With a fee of 15,000 VND/wish, registering too many is not only costly but also wasteful.

According to Prof. Dr. Nguyen Tien Thao - Director of the Department of Higher Education (Ministry of Education and Training), information technology can still handle this record number of wishes, but it will cause waste when candidates register too many unspecified wishes. From there, he proposed to consider the responsibility of candidates when setting wishes for universities instead of setting wishes based on emotions.

In fact, this year the virtual filtering process must be increased 4 times (to 10 times compared to the original plan of 6 times) and the announcement of the benchmark scores must be delayed to ensure accurate and fair results. Not only is it a waste of money, but candidates massively register dozens to hundreds of wishes without considering their interests, personal abilities and career suitability, as shown in the registered majors that are completely unrelated to each other, causing many people to question how the school and family guide candidates' career orientation.

New student Nguyen Duc Long (Hanoi Foreign Trade University) said that this is his second choice (according to the method of considering high school graduation exam scores) and his first choice is Hanoi University of Science and Technology, Faculty of Control Engineering - Automation according to the method of considering talent but he was not accepted. "I registered according to my parents' orientation, and consulted with friends. My brother is a student at Hanoi University of Science and Technology so the whole family wants me to study there for convenience in studying and living. I registered at Foreign Trade because this is a top school" - Long said.

In fact, it is not uncommon for students to register their wishes based on the opinions of their parents, relatives or friends and are always warned by admissions experts. Many candidates choose schools because of their reputation, their ability to pass or because they want to study with their friends. However, if they do not carefully consider their abilities, interests, suitability and financial conditions, their studies will not be smooth and after graduation, it will be difficult to stick with the profession for a long time.

Most candidates register for many wishes to "guarantee" admission to university, that is not wrong, but if they pass the course they do not like, there are many cases where they study for a few semesters and then drop out, some reluctantly complete but after graduation cannot find a suitable job, work in the wrong field, even do manual labor jobs, export labor without a university or college degree, causing a great waste of time and money for both family and society.

Solutions to avoid waste

The Ministry of Education and Training said it is collecting opinions on issues related to admission based on academic records and reducing the number of university admission applications. This will be implemented at more than 500 universities and colleges nationwide. If consensus is received, these contents will be officially implemented from 2026. Specifically, the Ministry of Education and Training proposed the following options: There should be a maximum of 5 applications, 10 applications or no application limit.

Analyzing this year's admission season, the record increase in the number of applications while the number of candidates has not changed much compared to previous years also comes from the concerns of candidates and their families about changes in the admission process to universities and colleges. The lack of early admission and the complexity in the way of converting scores between admission methods of schools make candidates register many applications to increase their chances of being admitted. Although according to the regulations of the Ministry of Education and Training, universities must announce the regulations on the difference in scores between admission combinations, the rules for converting admission scores closely following the instructions of the Ministry before registering, but even now, many students have been admitted and enrolled but still do not understand why they passed one application but failed another. The reason is that many schools only inform candidates of their admission scores according to the school's conversion plan compared to the standard score but do not specifically announce the calculation method, making candidates very confused. On the contrary, although the high school graduation exam scores were higher than the standard scores according to the graduation exam score assessment method announced by the school, many candidates still failed. Candidates then had to call the school's admissions office to find out that the standard scores announced by the school were for the original combination and were different from the standard scores of other combinations.

While in previous years, candidates only needed to add up the scores of 3 subjects in the admission combination to know whether they passed or failed compared to the school's announced benchmark score, with the conversion of scores lacking information and calculation formulas... because schools do not announce them, students cannot reasonably predict their chances of admission. Candidates reacted by registering many wishes, spread out in groups of "dream - within ability - safe" in the hope of not being unfairly eliminated because they chose the wrong combination or the wrong method with an unfavorable conversion coefficient. Some candidates even frankly registered more wishes to avoid the worry of being unexpectedly rejected because they did not meet the newly appeared sub-criteria, which were not announced by the school in advance. This is something that needs to be further improved and overcome in the following admission seasons so that the admission process is truly public and transparent, not confusing candidates about passing or failing without understanding why.

In addition, although the general enrollment support system of the Ministry of Education and Training is assessed to operate stably, overcoming many shortcomings of previous years, there are still challenges that need to be solved, which are the psychology and registration strategy of students. It is necessary to continue to pay attention, orient, and do a good job of career guidance in schools, closely connect schools and families to help candidates have the best choice, and fully develop their own abilities and strengths in study, work and life.

There are still many admission methods.
With 17 admission methods this year, according to the assessment of the Ministry of Education and Training, there are still many. Of which, the number of candidates applying for admission based on transcripts accounts for 42.4%, and those applying for admission based on high school graduation exam results accounts for 39.1%. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Tien Thao - Director of the Department of Higher Education (Ministry of Education and Training) raised the issue that the transcript method has many impacts on admission results and learning outcomes. So should we maintain the admission based on transcripts in the future or not? Especially when for many years, admission based on transcripts has still had many controversies about fairness and transparency.
The Law on Higher Education stipulates that higher education institutions have the autonomy to decide on their admission methods. This right comes with the responsibility to ensure fairness, transparency and compliance with legal regulations, under the supervision of the Ministry of Education and Training.

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Source: https://baolaocai.vn/huong-nghiep-cho-hoc-sinh-pho-thong-de-chon-dung-nganh-nghe-post882558.html