High school graduates are practically guaranteed a spot in a local university. University admission lists are out, and the acceptance rate has reached a record high of 98.94%. The sky-high number has come about due to a reduced number of examinees taking the new exam that’s replaced the Advanced Subjects Test. With fewer students vying for more than 39,000 vacant spots at universities nationwide, most students have been admitted to the programs they wanted. But this also means that more than 14,000 spots have been left vacant across 22 universities, both public and private.

University admission lists are out for students who took the new exam that replaced the Advanced Subjects Tests. Uncertainties over the updated exam process, and a lower number of people retaking these tests, propped up acceptance rates to a record high of 98.94%.

Tsai Chun-li
Exam committee
This year, the acceptance rate is 6.84 percentage points higher than the 91.14% rate in 2020. Last year’s high school graduates weren’t willing to sit the updated exam. So there were 11,832 fewer examinees. That’s one of the factors that pushed up the acceptance rate.

Last year, 40,918 students registered to sit the now-defunct Advanced Subjects Test. This year, only 29,086 students signed up for the new version of the test, as re-sitters were put off by the new format of the exam, and examinee numbers shrunk due to falling birthrates. All in all, there were 39,350 vacant spots available at universities around Taiwan, including more than 10,000 spots left empty from the General Scholastic Ability Test earlier in the year. Now that the two university admission routes are closed, 14,493 student spots have been left unfilled. That’s a marked increase from the 2,732-student shortfall in 2021 and the 51-student shortage in 2020.

Tsai Chun-li
Exam committee
This year, the Mathematics A questions in the General Scholastic Ability Test were harder than usual, so that left 14,435 places vacant earlier in the year. Altogether there were 39,350 spots available at universities this time round, but the number of students who took the new test was much lower.

The updated admission exam no longer features the Mandarin, English or Mathematics I tests of its precursor, the Advanced Subjects Test. The changes have made universities have to reconsider the admissions procedures and grades, shifting the acceptance requirements to higher education courses.