The Unified State Examination, wonderful and terrible, it seems that everything … flew away. They argued about him: some reprimanded the value of the world, others idolized it. They cursed him as an Egyptian execution and praised him as if this was the greatest conquest, the only chance for a better life for every growing human being. How many people threatened to cancel the exam! And how did they protect him from these malicious encroachments! And what? And suddenly it somehow shrunk on its own, turned yellow and withered. And it didn’t look good for anything. If earlier a lucky person passed the Unified State Exam with a hundred points, and this success flew like a victory flag, driving all enemies to despair, now … this no longer guarantees anything. Absolutely nothing. What happened?
My daughter entered college this year. received. As the winner of the two-list Olympiad in Russian language and literature, Herzen entered the philological faculty of the Russian State Pedagogical University without an exam. In total, the Olympics with him took six budget places from him. In linguistics, eight winners and prize winners of the British Olympics took place with the same number of budget places. My daughter’s friend entered ITMO to study business informatics, also as an Olympic student. And 28 more people went there in the same way, leaving only one (!) budget place for USE students.
In this case, it is clear that the budget will not exceed with some exam scores. In the ranking lists after applicants with the right to BVI (without entrance exams), the top places were not only occupied by high scores, who passed each exam with more than 90 points, no, real record holders settled there – guys with 300 – 310 points. 300 points are three exams for the face. And how about 310? And this is the Unified State Exam plus personal achievements: gold medal, winning non-core Olympics, TRP badge, volunteering, portfolio and so on. In Herzen, to which my daughter has already applied as an additional in general, in a foreign language, that is, according to the Unified State Examination, she was in 94th place with a score of 284 – no chance.
Waxing crying and teeth grinding. People discussing the current admissions campaign have no idea what’s going on. Previously, the targeted and beneficiaries were fired, now all the rage has fallen on the Olympics. They just couldn’t find anything. They write that this is a new corruption. They write that for money they train for victories at the Olympics, and sometimes the prizes are not sold at all. They write that the developers of the Olympic tasks combined the answers to the participants for a fee. They write that the winners of the Olympics were nothing but divorced them as “uncut dogs”. The funny thing is that all of this is generally broadcast by medalists and high scorers who get the same, booed alike, or so-called “exaggerated excellent students” at the same time. “trained monkeys” followed by “brainless iron donkey owners”. But now, I mean, they hate it themselves, and they’re not tight anywhere.
However, you can understand them. Understand and empathize. When you really try honestly, it ripped your veins and no, it’s not stupid at all, if not genius (and where are the geniuses, huh?), and college becomes as inaccessible as a flight to Venus, then you’re not going to sing like that.
But the reality, of course, presents a slightly different picture. What’s happening? There are 497 public universities in Russia, but everyone wants to study at the age of 20-30. It is clear that there are other aspects. Thousands of people dream of entering a (conditional IT) again, and others (some, God forgive me, hydrometeorology) simply come out of desperation with literally triple in the Unified State Exam. The state also has interests. If physicists are more or less happy now, you can go to engineers with 70 points in math. If there is no need for the humanities in FIG, then here are ten budget places for a city of five million people, of course, with a flock of applicants from all over the country, with a passing score of 295-300.
Why is it difficult to get into popular fields or faculties with an insignificant number of government-funded places at the USE? Yes, because the USE fell victim to an arms race, so to speak. Or inflation hit it. Each year, the average USE score increased slightly, and each year there were those who scored higher, because schoolchildren fighting for their future were willing to spend more and more time preparing, and their parents increasingly agreed to spend it. money for teachers. It turns out that not only geeks can pass the exam with 90-100 points. It turns out that this is not just a matter of talent, but of resources and self-discipline. Meanwhile, the passing grade in universities increased with the expenditures of adults and the insistence of young people. And in the end, everything hit the ceiling. We soon concluded that a few dozen points of students were starting to apply for a state-funded place at top universities. How to be?
The system cannot live without development and complexity. The complexity comes from the existence of many parallel alternative ways to achieve the result. An alternative to USE is the Olympiad. There really are a lot of them now. Almost every university conducts its own studies. At the same time, universities agreed to count the results of each other’s Olympics. Yes not all, not everywhere, not always, but there are many options. The Olympic movement was divided into different levels. With a third-level Olympiad, you won’t be able to enter Moscow State University without an exam, but the diploma of the winner or award-winner in some fields can count as a hundred points in the USE profile, which is not bad. Additional points can be awarded (if not more than ten) for a high result in a non-core Olympiad.
Yes, everything is quite confusing, everything is very difficult. But who prevents understanding and trying different things? My daughter understood, tried – it worked. Himself, without teachers, without my requests and reproaches. And it didn’t cost him any special effort or nerves, she. (This admissions campaign got on my nerves because it’s impossible: either there’s something wrong with the system and everything’s crashing, then the record listings last year, then those awful ratings.)
Yes, now they have started to prepare professionally for the Olympics. Yes, preparation for them is as tedious and systematic as the exam. But you can also prepare yourself. Again, exactly the same as the exam. Also, if there is talent, if a person is really passionate about the subject, it is possible to win the Olympiad without special preparation. And again, it is worth noting that a talented and enthusiastic person will not pass the Unified State Exam at all. Of course, non-standard thinking can play a cruel joke, and a student passes a standard exam not with 100 points, but with 85. But not with 50. It’s great to have different options for differently organized, different thinking graduates.
There is no more room for corruption in the Olympic industry than the Unified State Examination. Simply because the organization and verification systems are similar. Tests are carried out on different sites, anonymous work is checked by third-party experts. Except at the lowest levels of all Russia – at the district and school stages – some form of abuse is purely theoretically possible. But it’s so pointless, so incapable of giving anything to anyone, that fools still have to risk their reputations.
The problem is definitely not corruption. The problem is that the Olympic movement also seems to be at its peak. And soon it will hit the ceiling. Yes, it’s already stuck. What will happen?
Other alternatives are also being developed. Increasingly, major universities are running their own supplementary entrance examinations (SWI). Perhaps this is what will come to the fore in the future. But that’s unlikely because that would mean returning to what we left off 20 years ago. And actually, very few people want that. Perhaps the portfolio or conditional “social rating” of applicants will play a big role. But even such a prospect scares many: after all, higher education is about knowledge and skills, and not who transfers how many grandmothers across the road.
Most likely, some sort of balance will be struck when checking how well a person can solve typical problems (USE) and how close they can get to any problem in a non-trivial way (the Olympics). how long he was able to study at a particular university, responsive to his needs (DWI, interviews), and how good a person he is overall.
Of course, I would also like some changes regarding the distribution of budget places. Not bare rationalism and conjuncture, but a little more humanity. Not only are places added to the conditional “drugs” and “pads”, as the country needs doctors and teachers, so that not only physicists are welcome, but also humanitarians are crushed. Because this “reasonable” approach, this so-called orientation towards the real needs of the economy, is a ticking time bomb. In fact, it may turn out that those who go to universities with a score of 170-200 will never be good doctors, teachers, engineers, and those who do not have time to navigate the Olympic diversity cannot get out of their minds. The provinces that went to Moscow in DWI and could not pass the budget with 290 USE points can make a worthy contribution to the culture of the country.
It is wrong to cut the talented, the smart and the hardworking. It’s kind of bullshit.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.
Source: Gazeta
