The largest universities named the most popular specialties of the year

Most Russian universities will start the academic year on September 1 in full-time format, but will be required to comply with sanitary safety measures. This was announced in mid-August by the head of the Ministry of Education and Science Valery Falkov. He estimated the proportion of universities that would invite their students to desks and classrooms at 96.4%.

The admission campaign to universities this year began at the end of June. This time, based on the experience of 2020, applicants were offered to submit documents through the personal accounts of universities, by mail or using the “Admission to the University Online” service. A key feature of the 2021 campaign was admission to higher education in one wave, which was announced by the Ministry of Education and Science last fall. Also, applicants have the opportunity to apply for admission to ten directions at once within the framework of one university. The total number of universities where this could be done increased to five.

At the end of the admission campaign, in mid-August, a petition appeared on the change.org platform in which applicants criticized the admission to one wave. The authors of the petition argued that this format of admission does not look fair, school graduates risked not enrolling in any university, it was difficult to assess their chances of enrollment. In addition, as the document says, there were situations when, in the last minutes of the work of the selection committee, an applicant could drop several positions in the lists and “fly out of the budget”.

RBC looked into which areas in technical, natural science and humanitarian universities were the most popular with applicants, what was the average USE score in 2021, how many students entered using online services, and how the universities themselves assessed the practice of entering in one wave.