Armenian high school students, parents protest new university entrance exam regulations

High school graduates and their parents have been protesting in Armenia for the past several days. The reason behind these demonstrations is that a number of high school students who received high scores on their admissions exams were still not admitted into universities. At the same time, those who had lower scores were allowed in. The situation occurred because of new regulations from the Ministry of Education, which were only passed a month and a half before the start of admissions exams. And many people simply did not get the memo.

The new rules state that priority will be given to students based on their choice of profession, and not on their test scores. In other words, students who were still deciding and looking at several different majors did not compete with each other for higher scores. The students admitted were those who had indicated the specific department and area of study as their first choice, and not those who scored the highest, as was the case before.