If you are a high school student, it's time to think about where to go to study further. There are many universities, but you need to choose only one. How to do it right, so as not to regret later? We have compiled a list of the main selection criteria that will help you decide.
Start your search for a university as early as possible, visit the days open doors and look for important information in the Internet
Basic Criteria
1. Availability of a program of interest
If you have decided on a profession, then first you need to find a university with a chosen specialty. Please note that in the same area of specialization in different universities may differ. Carefully study the programs, look for the profile that you need. If you have not yet decided on the direction, choose a multidisciplinary university.
2. State or non-state
find out status property of the university, usually it indicated in the full name of the institution. In most cases state universities provide more public places than private ones. In addition, you can count on social support and assistance from the state.
3. Availability of state accreditation
It is easier to find a job with a state-recognized diploma
Important Criteria
1. Budget places and competition
All universities in the country allocate a certain number of places: for budgetary and paid departments, for full-time or correspondence form learning. You can find out these figures on our website in the section Universities and specialties. For comparison: « many places» - from 50 and above.« High competition» - from 25 and above. This is typical for most areas of training, except for medical ones.
When choosing a university, adequately assess your chances of getting on the budget
2. Tuition fees
It is not always possible to enter the budget, so find out in advance the cost of studying at a paid department. Different programs usually have different prices. Life hack: at a top university, you can study relatively inexpensively on new or unpopular programs - look for them! AND specify the amount by which the payment is increased every year adjusted for inflation.
3. Availability of a hostel
If you are a non-resident - this is one of the most important criteria. Find out if the university can provide housing for everyone. In some institutions, there are few places in the hostel, they are distributed on a competitive basis. Also find out payment amount, the condition of the buildings and the distance from them to the university.
Find out what the conditions of living in a hostel
4. Corruption
Corruption is rampant in some universities. In order not to run into such an educational institution, look for reviews on the net, monitor the news. Scandals of this kind are always covered in the press. Also look for thematic student communities in in social networks where information can be obtained from verified persons.
5. Number of bodies
Some universities have several buildings in different locations. It is better when there are fewer of them, and they are close to each other. In this case, you do not have to travel to the other end of the city for a certificate or to pass the test. The fewer buildings, the less often they lose and more often they sign documents, better communication with the management of the university.
6. Loyalty
In order not to fly out already from the first year, choose a university with a loyal attitude towards students. Find out for what mistakes they can be expelled, is it possible to retake the tails, how strict the teachers are. All this information can be found on student forums and thematic groups in social networks.
7. Teaching staff
The ideal option is when doctors of sciences and professors teach at the university, only a candidate of sciences can defend master's work, and only a doctor of sciences has a candidate's dissertation. It is good if foreign lecturers are involved in teaching. It is always better to know about progressive foreign practices, not to get hung up on domestic approaches.
And a few more interesting points
Scholarship programs
Each institution has its own system of accruals. Find out what the amount of payments in a particular institution is, whether it is possible to increase them for special achievements in studies. Choose a university that definitely has scholarships if you plan to live at your own expense and separately from your parents.
International programs
A criterion for those who dream of overseas countries. In universities with international programs, there is an opportunity to go for an internship either for free or for ridiculous money. In any case, it will be cheaper than resorting to the services of agencies.
Master's programs
If you are not very fond of changes in life, then look for a university that has a large selection of master's programs. A master's degree is a great chance to delve into science or change the profile of education in case of disappointment in choosing a profession.
Accelerated Programs
If you have the ability to quickly learn information, you can switch to an accelerated program after the 1st course. To do this, you will need to pass a recertification. And if you already have a college or technical school diploma, you can immediately enroll for a shortened period of study. So you save time and money, get to work faster.
Choosing a profession is a responsible matter, because it determines the future life of a person. The beginning of a career path is laid in the learning process. Therefore, success in the labor market depends on the choice of specialty. To enroll in an interesting area of study, you need to pass the exam in the subjects that are needed at the qualifying stage.
Features of choice
Why choose the right subject for the state exam? Mathematics and Russian are mandatory for passing throughout the country. All other subjects are chosen by the students themselves. At the same time, for admission in certain areas of study, you need to pass profile disciplines.
To the main reasons motivating a deliberate decision about which USE exams will be given to schoolchildren, the following should be attributed.
- Preparing for exams takes a lot of work. Changing the decision to choose a subject in the last weeks before the exam threatens that the result will be low.
- Subjects can differ significantly between undergraduate profiles, even within the same direction. For example, in management, a university may offer programs in public and municipal government and regional studies. Entrance exams, respectively, will differ.
- Retake promptly the subject that was required for admission to educational program, impossible.
- If you pass the most popular combinations of items in a single state exam, you can apply for admission not only to different universities, but also to various areas. If the student is compulsory subjects If he adds physics, he can enter both "air navigation", and "instrument engineering", and "biotechnology".
- By choosing in advance the disciplines for the exam, the student can determine those where his knowledge is better. If he additionally studies, you can count on a higher score and a beautiful certificate.
What to study before choosing subjects?
Before choosing disciplines for the exam, you should study a large amount of information:
- university education programs;
- entrance examinations and conditions for admission to specific profiles of study;
- the prestige and prospects of the profession that the student wants to get (there are statistics on the most popular specialties in a few years);
- demand in the labor market for representatives of the chosen profession;
- the level of pay that is usually offered to those who have received the appropriate education.
The study of these data will allow you to understand which exams you need to declare for passing.
How to determine for yourself a specialty according to the passed state exams?
It happens that the USE exams are passed, but for some reason the student changed his mind about entering the previously chosen university or direction. This may even be associated with the reorganization or liquidation of an educational institution in a region or city. In this position, you need to quickly determine what you can do. The conditions for admission to universities determine the following opportunities:
- applying to a university in another region under the same conditions;
- changing the profile and direction of study;
- graduates of previous years can take exams during the admission campaign;
- enter a university in a direction that is less interesting, and then make a transition to another educational program. Most of the first-year subjects are the same for different educational institutions. The student will have to pass several subjects in order to catch up with fellow students.
Knowing which direction the child gravitates to, parents can help him with the definition of a specialty.
Additional means for self-determination
Choosing a future specialty is not easy. It is difficult for a student to deal with inner feelings, to understand who he wants to become. Therefore, the following tools can help him:
- vocational orientation tests;
- self-determination tests;
- trainings that allow you to understand your goals and desires in the future;
- tests for the level of abilities in different areas;
- occupation ratings;
- excursions to future places of work in order to feel the atmosphere in which one has to work.
Parents must accept Active participation in determining the list of subjects for which their child will take the exam. After all, they know well his strengths and weak sides, can help in an in-depth study of the subject. The student must take exams that are taken into account when entering the program of study that interests him, even if the number of points for them is expected to be lower than in other disciplines.
If there is no motivation to gain knowledge, then success in building a career will not work. When a student knows that he should pass the exams “excellently”, that this will help him enter a prestigious university, he will want to study more. Self-development will allow him to achieve other goals in the future.
Choosing a specialty for an applicant is often a difficult question. After all, everyone wants the years spent studying at the university not to be in vain and become a good launching pad for life. So that future work brings pleasure and gives the opportunity to earn good money.
So, how not to make a mistake and choose the specialty that will become a vocation for life? There are some simple tips.
It's no secret that after graduation young specialist will need to be employed. Therefore, leaning towards the choice of a particular specialty, one should study whether there is a need for qualified personnel in this profession on the labor market, what kind of earnings a novice specialist can expect and what will be the prospects for his career growth.
Tip two. The profession should correspond to personal preferences.
When choosing a specific specialty, one should evaluate whether it will be comfortable for a young specialist to work in this position, whether it will bring him moral satisfaction.
Of course, if humanitarian subjects are better at school, then it is difficult to count on the fact that an applicant will be able to pass the exam in mathematics or physics perfectly. Therefore, it is more logical to make a choice of a specialty in subjects in which a high school student is best in time.
The passing score and the competition for various specialties can vary significantly. Therefore, before submitting documents, it is worthwhile to realistically assess your strengths and prospects for passing to the budget or off-budget.
If the applicant does not live in Moscow, then, having chosen the appropriate specialty, he should carefully study in which universities he can get it. At the same time, pay attention to how far it will be from home, whether a hostel will be provided and, most importantly, whether the parents will be able to provide student accommodation in this city.
When choosing a specialty, one should provide for “retreat routes”, that is, think about where you can apply if the applicant does not pass the competition for the desired specialty at this university.
Thus, when choosing a specialty, one should not be guided by the "poke" method, but realistically assess one's chances and future prospects, take into account personal preferences and provide for retreat routes. And if you study at a paid department, then you also need to calculate whether the money for education will be rationally spent.
Perhaps a guide to specialties would be useful "
Studying radiophysics at VSU
Choosing a university is a confusing and lengthy task. The advice of friends is not always objective, but you need to form your own opinion. Consider 5 websites that will help you choose a university in your region and learn about the quality of education in a particular educational institution.
do the right thing
How to use. This is the official service of the Ministry of Education, which will help you choose a university. To find a list of suitable educational institutions:
1. Indicate the level of education: bachelor's, master's, postgraduate
2. Choose the form of study and specialty
3. Indicate the regions and cities in which you would like to study
4. Specify the exam that you are going to take
As a result, you get a list of universities that match the specified parameters. Now you can compare specific educational institutions by 13 parameters. Pay attention to the following:
👌🏻 Shape: state or non-state
👌🏻 Availability military department
👌🏻 Army reprieve
👌🏻 Availability of hostel
👌🏻 Graduate Employment Share
👌🏻 Average salary
National research, base and federal will have more funding from the state. Such a university should have good equipment and renovated classrooms. Average score The Unified State Examination among applicants speaks of the demand for the university. But this score is given for the entire university, so look for Additional information for the required faculty, the service does not provide it.
When you decide on a university, go to its personal page on the website. There will be detailed information: groups in social networks, phones and all areas of training.
pros
👉🏻 Convenient website, apps for iOS and Android
👉🏻 A detailed set of parameters for generating a list of universities
Minuses
👉🏻 Little information about specific universities
If you did not have enough information to choose a university, go to the RAEX rating. Here you may not find the desired educational institution, since the list includes only 100 positions.
How to use. Here is the usual list in descending order of points. It is impossible to compare individual universities according to the criteria. For convenience, you can use the browser search on the page, for this, press Ctrl + F.
There are separate lists for employment, quality of education and research activities. But there are not 100 universities, but 20.
pros
👉🏻 Detailed analysis of 100 universities
Minuses
👉🏻 Inconvenient site, cannot be compared required universities according to the criteria
Alumni Employment Monitoring Portal
The Ministry of Education, together with the Tax and Pension Fund, keeps track of employed graduates. All data is open and can be viewed on the website.
How to use. On the site you can see data on regions and specific universities. Let's take data on universities.
1. At the very top, select the year for which the data is displayed. Now the last one is 2015. This is the most recent data because compilers wait a year after students graduate and then process the data. You can read more about the monitoring system on the main page of the portal.
3. Look at the specialty code. If the code is 03.03.03, then this is a bachelor's degree, and if 04.03.03, then a master's degree. The second two digits are responsible for the degree of training. Masters have higher salaries, but there will be significantly fewer graduates.
It is impossible to compare indicators in the specialty with another university directly on the site. We advise you to write out the data in a notepad or in excel, so that it is convenient to compare.
On the university page there is a Profile tab, where you will find summary about the educational institution, and "Geography", which presents a map of Russia with the number of graduates settled in different regions.
pros
👉🏻 There is detailed data on all universities and specialties
👉🏻 Objective information backed up by real data from the tax and PFRF
Minuses
👉🏻 It is impossible to compare one specialty in different universities
👉🏻 The service takes into account only employment by profession. If you are done Faculty of Physics and left to work as a programmer, you will not be taken into account in the share of employed
Rating of the service "Superjob for students"
How to use. Three ratings are available on the site in different areas: technical, economic and legal. Classical universities can be in any of these lists or in several at once. It depends which graduates get the most salary
Minuses
👉🏻 Not very transparent evaluation criteria. It is not clear how large the sample of graduates is
👉🏻 Only three areas where compilers analyze data
👉🏻 You can’t compare specific universities, you need to write out the data
Monitoring the effectiveness of universities
Monitoring is carried out by the Ministry of Education. The site is aimed more at educational specialists than applicants, therefore the data is written here difficult language. Dealing with it is more difficult than with the services above.
How to use. Monitoring results are sorted by regions. On the region page, you will see general statistics and data on the branches of science of each university. There are eight criteria in total, each has a complex grading system and many parameters. This is very similar to the RAEKS rating method.
1. Select the desired region from the list.
2. Indicate all universities and the distribution of students in different fields of science. For example, if you want to study in the field of arts and culture, look at which university has the most places in this specialty. Start studying the list of universities from this educational institution.
3. Once on the page of the university, you will see five sections.
In the first section lists general information.
In the second presented just the eight indicators that you mentioned above. For each of them, a threshold is set, which the university must exceed.
Pay attention to indicators educational activities, employment and wages of teaching staff (professional and teaching staff). The latter is important, because a teacher with a good salary does not need to earn extra money on the side and he devotes more time to teaching.
In third The section presents all the parameters by which eight main indicators are evaluated. If there is no desire to understand this amount of information, look at the graphs. At each of them, your university is compared with universities in the region and with universities in the country. Find the parameters by which the university remains worse than others. It is bad if the university has poor funding and a poor percentage of employment.
3. In the section "The role of the organization in training personnel for the region" you will find information on the distribution of specialists in the region. The most important is the fourth column of the table. It indicates the percentage of jobs in the specialties that the university closes.
If you see 75% there, then 3/4 of all specialists in this field are trained by the selected university. This is good, because there will be many companies near the university and basic departments will be opened.
pros
👉🏻 An exhaustive amount of data
👉🏻 The results for each criterion are on the site and, unlike the ratings, you can see them
Minuses
👉🏻 The criteria are described very complicated, it takes a lot of time to figure it out
👉🏻 There is no comparison of specific universities according to one or more criteria
On the eve of admission, each student, as a rule, more or less imagines which subjects he knows better (and, accordingly, in which disciplines he has a great chance of getting high scores on the exam). But if you choose exams just off the top of your head, without focusing on specific specialties and universities, then you may well run into problems during the entrance campaign.
Three key points in choosing
In order not to "fly" past the admission to interesting profiles this year, we recommend that you take into account three main points:
Broad coverage or narrowly focused work?
So, for each group of specialties, there are usually profile exam and one or two additional ones (except for the obligatory Russian). Therefore, there are two main strategies between which you will have to choose:
- Surrender big number of USE . For example, if you are interested in the specialty "Recreation and sports and health tourism" and those close to it, you can pass Russian, biology, as well as geography, social studies, mathematics and a foreign language - the entire set of disciplines that, in principle, may be required in universities with training on this profile. Such a strategy is suitable if the passing score in your chosen specialty is not too high, because it is unlikely that you will have the strength and time to prepare equally well for all the exams in such a quantity.
- Passing the required minimum exam. This is the same option with the most common disciplines that we talked about earlier. However, if you are interested in entering a single, exceptional, specific university, and you feel in yourself the ability to overcome its passing score, then you may not even be interested in the introductory rules of other educational institutions. This approach is good as an opportunity to better prepare for exams (due to their smaller number) and get a better result.
Both strategies have their advantages and disadvantages, and it is up to you to decide which one to prefer, and how to subsequently choose a university in the USE subjects, for example, in Moscow, or in any other city.
What, besides the exam and the certificate, is taken into account upon admission?
The main thing that is important when choosing a university based on the USE scores is to pass the exams as best as possible and get a good grade in the certificate. At the same time, the results of the state exam must be above the minimum threshold values that are set every year by Rosobrnadzor (you can find them on the official website of the department, or on the Internet portal of the USE itself). But, besides this, for successful admission, you may need / help the following:
- Creative tests on the basis of the university. They are mandatory for those who plan to work in the field of culture and arts (artists, designers, actors, choreographers, and so on). This means that if you fail the internal creative exam, you will not be able to enter the institution you like, even if everything is in order with the scores of the certificate and the Unified State Examination. It is best to find out what kind of creative test is conducted at the university, what needs to be prepared for it, how it will be evaluated, etc., it is best to visit its official website. In addition, if the university has active groups in social networks, then from there you can get feedback from former applicants about the course of taking the creative exam.
- Other additional internal format tests. For example, for admission to specialties related to international relations, carried out quite often internal exams in universities for knowledge foreign language. How they are organized and evaluated - again, you can always find out on the official website of the institution.
- Extra points. Theoretically, each applicant has the opportunity to receive up to 10 points in addition to certificates of USE results . These points can be awarded for winning olympiads, medals or winning major sports competitions, " gold medal» (getting school certificate with honors), volunteering (for a period of at least 4 years), winning creative and intellectual competitions, final essay. Information about such achievements must be provided admission committee to improve your chances of being successful.
- Privileges. Orphans and children whose parents were deprived of parental rights, disabled people of the first and second groups belong to the privileged category of applicants. If they basically have results on necessary USE(with points passing minimum threshold), then they can enter out of competition. But this possibility is not unlimited: the Ministry of Education annually sets a certain quota for the number of places intended for the training of "beneficiaries" for each university.
Primary and secondary USE scores
Talking about how to choose a university by subject, we have repeatedly mentioned passing and minimum scores. If you go to the website of some university and look at these values, then it may not be entirely clear to you how they turned out. Therefore, it is important to know that USE scores(same) can be presented in two different formats:
- Primary. It is based on the fact that each task in the exam has a certain “cost”, or certain evaluation criteria that allow you to set its “weight” (this applies to essays and similar works). Accordingly, the “costs” of the tasks you correctly completed are simply summed up, and you get primary scores USE.
- secondary. This format is somewhat more difficult to understand, but it is he who determines the final results of the work of each applicant. Each subject has its own algorithm for converting primary scores into secondary ones, based on a certain mathematical model, the essence of which is not so important to you. To understand how many secondary points you will receive with a certain number of primary, it is enough to use the tables for translation on the official website of Rosobrnadzor. This result will be used by the universities to which you apply.
We hope that it has become a little clearer for you how to choose an institute for USE subjects. If you don’t have any thoughts yet about what kind of job you would like to work in the future, don’t be too lazy to read our articles with the selection of specialties by discipline. Good luck with your admissions and studies!
