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Number of state-funded places in Russian universities down by 7,500

“An average admission score of this year amounted to 61.5 points for state-funded places and 55.4 points for privately-funded places

MOSCOW, September 6 (Itar-Tass) —— The number of state-funded places in Russian higher educational establishments was cut by 7,500 as compared with last year, Director of the Russian Education and Science Ministry’s Vocational Training Department Tatiana Davydenko told a Tuesday press conference.

“An average admission score of this year amounted to 61.5 points for state-funded places and 55.4 points for privately-funded places. The admission score was the highest in humanitarian sciences,” she said.

The demand was the highest for courses in applied math (which had the admission score of 84.8 points), high-tech and energy systems (78 points) and international relations (76.2 points).

High school graduates with the highest score in the unified state exam preferred the Moscow Physics and Mathematics Institute, Davydenko said. “We are glad that the Moscow Linguistics University and the Russian Plekhanov Economics University were the other top two choices of the best school graduates,” she said.

High school graduates with the lowest scores in the unified state exam were admitted to the St. Petersburg Machine Building Institute and the Grozny State Oil Institute, she said. “The number of state-funded places in such institutes will be reduced,” she said.

A number of institutes, among them the Moscow Sygin State Textile University and the Kurgan State University, failed to admit the planned number of students to state-subsidized places.

“A total of 15% of the entire applicants were benefit holders, among them winners of education contests (2%),” Davydenko said.

More than 2% of high school graduates failed the unified state exam this year, which is less than in the previous years, head of the Federal Education Supervisory Service Lyubov Glebova said earlier.

“A total of 2.1% of high school graduates (52,500 people) failed the unified state exam,” she said. “The indicator was 2.3% in 2010 and 3% in 2009.”

More than 2.6 million schoolchildren took the exam this year, which was 11.8% less than the year before, Glebova said.

The most popular subjects of the unified state exam were natural science, physics and biology. The smallest number of graduates chose literature, geography and foreign languages.

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