This country profile is part of a collective effort by the network members to map matching practices across Europe. If you find it useful and want to refer to it in your own work, please refer to it as “Vitaliia Eliseeva (2020), University Admission Practices – Russia, MiP Country Profile 31.”
Relevant country background
After 9 years of school education students can either get into colleges that offer specialized professional training (not tertiary education) or continue to high school for two more years. After professional training or high school students may take a centralized exam to apply to universities that offer Bachelor’s and Specialist’s degrees. Following the Bologna process, in 2003 Russian universities started transferring from Specialist’s 5-year degrees to a combination of 4-year Bachelor’s and 2-year Master’s. In 2018, around 26 000 Bachelor’s programs and 3 400 Specialist’s programs were offered to high school graduates. [1] Overall, the share of the population aged 25-64 with a degree in higher education has been steadily increasing from 24.5% in 2004 to 30.2% in 2015. [8]
In 2018, there were 818 universities providing tertiary education, 502 of them were public and 316 were private. [8] Public universities generally provide some combination of state-funded places and places with tuition fees within the same degree, whilst private universities supply only places with tuition fees (in some cases such fees can be covered by internal or external scholarships). Each year universities themselves set the number of places to provide on each program, but public universities are also obliged to approve the number of state-funded places in the Ministry of education. The total number of students admitted in 2018 for Bachelor’s and Specialist’s degrees was 903 415, and 378 931 of them got a state-funded place. [1]
In 2016, the average tuition fee was 51 533 rubles per semester in public universities and 40 774 rubles per semester in private universities, whilst the average monthly income across Russia was 32 609 rubles. [8] Tuition fees are significantly higher in prestigious programs with good placement of graduates where extremely high exam cutoffs are combined with a large number of applicants. Traditionally, such selective programs exist in public universities in big cities, whereas private universities provide a smaller number of bachelor’s programs and less competitive education. On average, tuition fees in prestigious programs range from 150 000 to 250 000 rubles per semester (up to 385 000 rubles per semester on double diploma programs with foreign universities).
Summary box
| Organization of higher education | Publicly (state-funded and tuition fee places) and privately funded universities (only tuition fee places) |
| Stated objectives of admissions policy | Ensure equality of opportunities and decrease cheating during the admissions procedure |
| Who’s in charge of admissions? |
(a) and (b) Clearinghouse. (c) Universities. |
| Admissions system in place since |
(a) 1972, with several changes. (b) 2012 |
| Available capacity | Capacity is determined for each subject at a university as the number of students a university has to admit per professor (see Kapazitätsverordnung KapVO). |
| Timing of enrolment |
(a) Clearinghouse sets uniform date for applications. Admission letters for the priority-based part of the matching procedure are sent out about two months before the semester starts; admission letters for the two-sided part are sent out about one month later. (b) Clearinghouse sets dates for different phases of DoSV procedure. (c) Exact dates are determined by universities with lots of variation, but there have been attempts by universities to harmonize dates in order to alleviate congestion problems. |
| Information available to students prior to enrolment period |
(a) All relevant data from past years (e.g. grades necessary to be admitted to each university in the different parts of the procedure, length of waiting time necessary to be considered under the waiting time quota, tie breaking criteria applied etc.). Boston mechanism for the two quotas is explained in detail, university-proposing Gale-Shapley for the two-sided part is not explained. Advice on strategic issues is provided. (b) Different steps of matching procedure are explained in detail, including the first part which mimics decentralized market. Deferred-acceptance algorithm applied in Coordination Phase 2 is not explained, but students are told that they should rank their applications according to their preferences. (c) Varies widely across universities, no centralized source of information. |
| Restrictions on preference expression |
(a) Applicants apply directly to the clearinghouse. Applicants can apply for a place in only one of the subjects offered in the centralized match. Applicants are allowed to submit one rank order list containing at most six universities for each part of the procedure. The two rank-order lists from an applicant can be completely different. (b) Applicants can apply to and rank-order up to 12 programs. (c) No restrictions concerning number of subjects and universities |
| Matching procedure |
(a) Boston mechanism for the priority-based part. The remaining seats are allocated among remaining applicants using the university-proposing deferred-acceptance mechanism. (b) University-proposing deferred-acceptance algorithm where first step of algorithm takes place in real time. (c) Applications and admissions at the level of the universities |
| Priorities and quotas |
(a) Quota for students with excellent grades from high school (20% of seats) and quota for students with longest waiting times (20% of seats). The remaining 60% are allocated according to applicants’ and universities’ preferences. (b) and (c) Universities set their own rules (Zulassungsordnung) within the legal framework of the states. |
| Tie-breaking |
(a) Several tie-breaking rules such as handicaps, parents living close by etc., lottery. (b) + (c) Left to decide by each individual university and state laws. |
Description of current practices
Enrolment takes place over the period from June to August. The information about the rules of admission to each university for the current academic year is published before the 1st of October and cannot be changed during the admissions process. There exist quotas (for disabled, orphans, and Crimean citizens), reserved places (which typically require a signed agreement with the firm or state enterprise covering the tuition costs in exchange for several years of working in the firm/enterprise post-graduation) and no-exams admissions (for winners of countrywide competitions, Olympic games winners). Such students apply separately from others before the beginning of the main process, therefore only state-funded places which are left after the admission of such students are filled according to the mechanism described below.
Unified State Exam scores are required to apply to any university. A student has a single aggregate score combining test scores and extra points for achievements such as sports achievements, good marks in high school and volunteering. Universities choose a set of tests required to apply to a program from 14 subject tests which a student typically takes in the first half of June. For example, economics programs typically require a set which consists of Russian, mathematics and social sciences. Programs differ both in sets of subject tests they accept and in the number of points awarded for extra achievements, thus aggregate scores of one student typically differ across programs. Universities break ties by assigning some subject tests a higher priority, and such priorities differ across programs and universities. For example, if two students have the same aggregate score and the programs’ priority is math, a student with a higher score in math test is placed higher in the ranking.
For each program a university can choose whether to accept USE results or to set university-held exams which can be used only to apply to their programs. For example, for economics program a university can decide to accept USE results of subject tests in Russian and social sciences but to hold its own exam in mathematics. Then the aggregate score of an applicant is the sum of USE scores, points for extra university-held exams and points for extra achievements. While USE content is highly regulated and based on the federal high school program, university-set exams can test creative skills and professional competencies, physical training or specific knowledge in the area of the future degree.
A student can apply up to 5 universities as well as 3 programs within each university, but there is no formal ranking of programs or universities by the student. A student can apply only to programs at which all his subject tests are higher than some minimum score. Such a student applies by coming to university in person or sending a package of documents by post or delivery service. This program- and university-specific minimum score is set for applications to both state-funded and tuition fee places. For each out of 15 programs students have options to apply only for state-funded/only for tuition fee/for both state-funded and tuition fee places. For each applicant admissions offices fill the form on the centralized online platform which prevents students from cheating through applying to more than 15 programs or lying about USE results. Nonetheless, the admissions process is decentralized and students mark the university of the first choice by physically bringing the original of a high school diploma (which is unique) to the admissions office of the university of their choice.
1) State-funded places. Universities rank students who applied for state-funded places with aggregate scores and such ordered lists of students are made public. Each university is obliged to publish the lists on the official university website by July 27th, at the latest, and there is no online service coordinating the lists of different universities. Universities themselves determine how often they update the lists: from updating every hour to never updating after the initial publication.
Each student has a unique hard copy of her high school diploma which at once can be physically placed only at one program she has already applied to. Students can transfer their diplomas at any day from the start of applications in late June until they are admitted to some university. A student can submit a diploma by post or delivery service, but she can withdraw a diploma only in person. Typically, a student can transfer a diploma between programs within one university instantly by phone, but it takes at least several hours to transfer the diploma between universities. This time also depends on the university policies and on the number of other students who want to transfer their diplomas on the same day. A student can be admitted only to a program he brought his original of high school diploma to, so for admissions system the diploma is considered as a non-cheating condition – it guarantees that no student is admitted to more than one university at a time.
Mechanism for state-funded places:
Before July 27th students apply to the maximum of 15 programs indicating whether they apply for state-funded/tuition fee/both types of places. From this moment on students can also mark one program at some university as their top choice be physically placing there (in person or by post) the original of high-school diploma. On July 27th universities stop accepting applications and publish ranked program-specific lists which include the information on exam score of an applicant and on whether she has already placed the original of high school diploma to a program. On July 27th applications for state-funded places close and further students are only able to transfer diplomas between the programs they have already applied to.
Step 1 (July 27th — August 1st). Every day students make decisions regarding transferring their originals of high school diplomas between the programs students have applied to with copies of the diploma. Students finally commit at the evening of August 1st by placing an original of the diploma to some program. When admissions offices close on the evening of August 1st, each university admits such a number of top-ranked students, who brought their high school diplomas, that 80% of places are filled.
Students who are satisfied with the universities they were admitted to on Step 1 don’t take part in Step 2. Students who are not satisfied with the universities they were admitted to can withdraw their diploma at any point during Step 2 and participate again (where program cutoffs are renewed), but they cannot bring their diploma to the program they were admitted to on Step 1.
Step 2 (August 2nd — August 6th). Every day students make decisions regarding transferring their high school diplomas between the programs students have applied to with copies of the diploma. Students finally commit at the evening of August 6th by placing an original of the diploma to some program. When admissions offices close on the evening of August 6th, each university admits such a number of top-ranked students, who brought their high school diplomas, that 100% of places are filled. Empty places that appeared when students withdrew their diplomas after Step 1 are also distributed during this step.
2) Tuition fee places. There is no common deadline for signing tuition fee places, which are provided by the principle ‘first-come-first-served’ until the capacity is distributed. Any student with a score above the minimum one who brought their hard copy of high school diploma and signed a contract, will be immediately admitted to a tuition fee place. In prestigious universities such minimum scores are generally higher than cutoffs for state-funded places in less prestigious universities. A student can break such a contract at any time, then university is obliged to return a high school diploma to the student immediately.
Example: A high-quality student with high exam scores has good chances to get a state-funded place, so she participates in both steps of the mechanism for state-funded places distribution. In the end of Step 1 such student is admitted to University 2 but she is not satisfied with this matching. She considers withdrawing the original of the high-school diploma and taking part in Step 2 in order to try to get into 20% of remaining places in more preferred University 1. Student’s actions are safe if she is included in 20% of potentially admitted students even if all other students above her in the ranking (in University 1) also transfer their diplomas from University 2 to University 1 during Step 2. This action is very risky if she is not in “absolute” top-20% because any last-minute decision of other students can get her out of the 20%.
She supposes that other students above her in the ranking will not transfer their diplomas to University 1, so she makes a risky decision to break a matching with University 2 and transfer her diploma to University 1. Unfortunately, when admissions offices close on the final day of Step 2, the lists are updated and it turns out that many students above her in the ranking also decided to transfer diplomas to University 1. As the result of Step 2 she does not get a state-funded place at University 1 and she may want to sign a tuition fee contract with University 1 or 2. But at this point all tuition fee places are taken by the students who had lower exam scores and small chances to get a state-funded place, so they made a safe and early choice signing contract for tuition fee places. High-quality student is left unmatched even though she was matched to a state-funded place in University 2 on Step 1 and could have gotten a tuition fee place in both Universities 1 and 2.
Higher School of Economics’ Case
Higher School of Economics is the only university that a) makes unconditional offers to students; b) gives different types of tuition fee waivers for places with tuition fees financing them from the university budget; c) ‘book’ a tuition fee place which is reserved for a high-quality student in case she doesn’t get a state-funded place. HSE has a significant influence on the admissions process because in 2018 it admitted 6452 students and was ranked as the university with the highest average exam scores among the ones who admitted more than 1000 students. [10]
On each step of the application process HSE does phone surveys of applicants in order to retrieve information on which applicants are planning to bring their high school diploma to HSE. Based on this information in the beginning of each step HSE makes offers to such a number of students that it is predicted that students who would accept offers would exactly fill the capacity. Students who have been offered a place are guaranteed to be admitted if they bring the original of a high school diploma. Extra students (above the number of state-funded places) who accept offers also have to be admitted, so HSE is obliged to give them tuition fee places with full fee waivers financing these students from the university budget. In 2018, 337 students out of total of 4438 students with state-funded places were admitted with such full fee waivers based on the offers. [10]
Another type of tuition fee waivers is given to students with high Unified State Exam results and high performance during university studies. HSE states that such policy is aimed to bring students (including the ones who could not afford education without a waiver) of higher quality who had such exam score that was not good enough to get a state-funded place in top university but higher than the average one for tuition fee places.
Performance
Both universities and officials estimate the quality of students by their average exam score over all subjects. This metrics is used for a variety of conclusions: the increase in the average exam score (compared to the previous year) of all high school graduates in some region can be seen as the increase in cheating, or as the increase in the quality of graduates’ training, or as the decrease in the level of tests. Universities where the average exam score for some program increased (compared to the previous year) conclude that there was an increase in the average exam score across all applicants or that better advertisement attracted students with better training.
Some low-quality universities still have unfilled places at the end of matching procedure (there were fewer applicants who brought diplomas than the number of places), so in August the Ministry of Education issues an amendment creating an additional step in the mechanism in order to fill state-funded places in such universities.
Recent policy change
The current admissions system appeared as the result of consequent decisions aimed at solving problems the system was facing at the moment. The USE was first established and used for university admissions nationwide in 2009. Contrary to the previous system there was no limit on the number of programs a student could apply to which created a situation where hundreds of students were competing for one place. A 3-step system where universities set exam score threshold (and admitted all committed students above the threshold) on the 1st step and held 2nd and 3rd steps only in the case there were some empty places left was introduced to solve the problem. In 2010 the rule of 5 universities and 3 programs within each university was introduced in order to decrease competition for one place. In the next years the number of steps of the mechanism was reduced to two, but the 2nd step was still conducted only if there were empty places left after the 1st one. In 2015 it was set that 2nd step should always be conducted and the distribution of places across steps should be fixed at 80%-20%.
From 1997 to 2017 the number of high school graduates halved reaching around 608 000. [10] In order to match decreasing demand and to increase the quality of education the government decreased the number of organizations accredited for different types of higher education from 2209 to 1116. [3] The changes primarily included lower-quality private universities and branches of bigger public universities. To 2024 the number of high school graduates is expected to increase again, reaching 800 000, which may incentivize the officials to increase the number of state-funded places.
Perceived issues
The initial goal of the Unified State Exam was to eliminate bribery in the university admissions system and discrimination of students from rural areas and students from families with lower socioeconomic status. Before the introduction of the USE students had to take entrance exams on the university territory, which put the costs of traveling and living up to one month in big cities such as Moscow and Saint Petersburg where most prestigious universities are located. In some cases exams in competing universities were held on the same day on purpose and demanded university-specific preparation which made students choose a limited set of universities in advance. Because university entrance exam grading was a close-door process, one common practice was to take private classes from a professor of the chosen university or to pay a bribe to get the highest exam result automatically. This resulted in the fact that whilst less than 20% of young people were born in the ten largest cities, they represented more than 60% of university graduates. [12]
USE practice allowed students to take any number of subject exams in their city or regional center and choose universities during the admissions process based on the USE results. Estimates show that due to the introduction of the USE the fraction of students from regions who started university education in another city increased three times (by 12 percentage points). [12] Nonetheless, there remains a significant gap in the quality of preparation for the USE between public schools and private schools or tutors. High-income students and applicants from Moscow and Saint Petersburg are still more likely to be accepted to a highly selective university due to more intensive pre-entry coaching. [13]
The effectiveness of high school teachers and headmasters is evaluated mainly based on USE results, which incentivizes teachers to help students during the exam which is held at school’s facilities in the regions. From 2013, to eliminate such cheating there were consecutively introduced cameras with online broadcasting, metal detectors, firewalls preventing the use of smartphones and earpieces, which significantly decreased cheating. Nonetheless, there remain leaks of exam tasks to the Internet before the exam, cheating during the USE and university-held entrance exams.
The main inefficiencies of the decentralized system are caused by vague legal regulation where universities have little formal requirements on providing information to students and there is no platform establishing formal communication between students and universities. Generally, top-ranked universities lose and low-quality universities win from incomplete information which makes applying to high-quality universities riskier. For example, a high-quality student may decide not to apply to high-quality university at all if ranked lists of students there are not updated daily which makes it more probable that in the end of the round it will be too late for a student to transfer a diploma to a “safe”, low-quality university where he will certainly be admitted. Therefore, top-ranked universities start publishing ranked lists at the end of June and update their lists every hour. On the opposite, low-quality universities act strategically in several ways: refuse to publish ranked lists online, publish unranked lists without scores of the applicants or pressure students during the communication with admissions offices.
The current admissions mechanism, where a hard copy of a high school diploma should be brought strategically during each admissions step, creates additional expenses for students who apply to universities situated in several locations. To transfer the diploma a student or his legal representative has to withdraw a diploma in person, which may create time and financial constraints. Moreover, low-quality universities increase time costs and violate federal law by strategically slowing down the process of diploma withdrawal to incentivize students not to withdraw the diploma. Therefore, many students have to decide where to place the diploma at the beginning of the mechanism and they may not be able to change their decision afterward, destroying the benefits they could get through updated rankings and dynamic system.
Moreover, some students do not place their diplomas anywhere until the last day of each admissions cycle which prevents other students with lower scores from estimating whether they can get into these universities. Such a strategy leads to the thinning of the market of top universities at the beginning and congestion at the end of the admissions cycle.
The principle of ‘first-come-first-served’ used for the distribution of tuition fee places is also raising some concerns. The average exam scores of students admitted to tuition fee places are generally lower than the ones for state-funded places and tuition fee places at high-quality universities are filled long before the end of the mechanism for state-funded places. Moreover, different competition for state-funded and tuition fee places compared to the general competition with separately awarded means based scholarships can be seen as unfair for students who cannot afford to pay tuition.
Existing data
[1] Data of the Ministry of Education
https://minobrnauki.gov.ru/ru/activity/statan/stat/highed/
[2] Monitoring of the quality of admissions to universities
https://ege.hse.ru/
[3] Daily updated lists of accredited universities and programs
http://obrnadzor.gov.ru/ru/opendata/7701537808-RAOO/
[4] Monitoring of the employment of graduates
http://vo.graduate.edu.ru/#/?year=2015&year_monitoring=2016
Legal texts
[5] Order of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation of 14.10.2015 №1147 “On approval of the procedure for admission to study in educational programs of higher education – undergraduate programs, specialist programs, masters programs”
http://base.garant.ru/71238710/53f89421bbdaf741eb2d1ecc4ddb4c33/
[6] Order of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation of 14.01.2003 №50 “On approval of the procedure for admission to state educational institutions of higher professional education of the Russian Federation”
http://www.consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_40885/
[7] Order of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation of 24.02.1998 №500 “On approval of the procedure for admission to state educational institutions of higher professional education of the Russian Federation”
http://www.consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_18576/
Other resources and references
[8] Higher School of Economics Yearly Data Books “Education in figures” (some years are available in English)
https://www.hse.ru/en/primarydata/oc/
[9] Higher School of Economics Yearly Data Books “Indicators of education” (some years are available in English)
https://www.hse.ru/en/primarydata/io/
[10] Statistics of the admissions to Higher School of Economics (in Russian)
https://ba.hse.ru/stat
[11] Ampilogov A., Prakhov I., Yudkevich M. (2014) One or Many? Using the New Opportunities of the Unified State Exam in Russian University Admissions. Widening Participation and Lifelong Learning. Vol. 16. No. 1. P. 34-49.
[12] Francesconi, M., Slonimczyk, F., & Yurko, A. (2019). Democratizing access to higher education in Russia: The consequences of the unified state exam reform. European Economic Review, 117, 56-82.
[13] Prakhov, I. (2016). The barriers of access to selective universities in Russia. Higher Education Quarterly, 70(2), 170-199.
[14] Prakhov, I. (2017). The prevalence and efficiency of investment in pre-entry coaching in Russia. Tertiary Education and Management, 23(2), 170-185.
[15] Prakhov, I., & Yudkevich, M. (2017). University admission in Russia: Do the wealthier benefit from standardized exams?. International Journal of Educational Development.