Admission Campaign – 2014: July

Dr. Lyudmila Tovarnichenko, Executive Secretary of the Admission Commission of Astrakhan State University, has told us the main events of the 2014 Admission Campaign at its hottest stage.

Before July 25, Astrakhan State University received documents to cover higher educational programs on full-time terms of studies. On July 28, it published lists of all those who had successfully submitted their application documents and specified the scores they gained at the Unified State Exam. Using professional terms, over 8, 500 person-applications had been submitted by the deadline for submitting entrance documents. A secondary school graduate could submit his or her documents to three different specialties.

“On July 21, we admitted students who have recently been acknowledged as citizens of the Russian Federation. We admitted five people from Crimea and Sebastopol. Three of them will study international relations; a fourth one is going to be a linguist; a fifth one will become a teacher of foreign languages”, this is what the Executive Secretary has told us.

On July 30, another meeting of the Admission Commission was held. At the same time, the first stage of admissions was launched. Already on July 31, lists of people admitted on target terms and lists of students admitted because they have special rights were published. As for these two categories of newly-admitted students, this year there have been some changes that relate to them.

A new feature of this year is that children with special health needs, orphans, and children who remained without their parents’ care are now admitted within a special quota. 40 students of this category will study at ASU within this quota.

The main change in target admissions is an increase in the number of students admitted on such terms to pedagogical specialties. “The Federal Government has issued a new Decree, and the quota for “target” future teachers can now exceed the previously determined rate of 15 %. The Regional Ministry of Education & Science has used this situation to order the training of future specialists for their needs, and that’s why the quota for pedagogical specialties is now 45 %”.

Many organizations of Astrakhan Region and practically all the relevant ministries have sent their people to get qualified personnel in the future. 73 future students will study at ASU on target terms.

As for our future students to be admitted on general terms, the first stage of their admission began on July 31. Earlier, the Admission Commission published lists of people recommended for admission. The white color denotes those future students who were lucky to be admitted on budget-financed terms (so they will not have to pay for their studies). They only had to submit the originals of their secondary education documents by August 04 and to decide which particular specialty they wish to cover. In this case, they could see their names in the long-awaited lists of admitted students already on August 05. As for folks whose names were highlighted in yellow, they made up a reserve list, and they still have a chance to be admitted on budget-financed terms, as usually not all the “white” folks submit the originals of their documents within the set terms (just because they might change their mind and decide to study at another university). The contest situation was changing every day; all the information was quickly updated both on the official web site and on the bulletin board at the main building of our University.

Working under very harsh and intense conditions, the Admission Commission was ready to receive prospective students even on Saturday and on Sunday. Deans of Departments personally helped their future students to make the final choice of their future profession.

The Order to admit new students shall be published on August 11 for the 2^nd wave. Besides, the last summer month will be the time to admit students to distance education studies, to master programs (there are 412 budget-financed positions and 1, 239 registered person-applications), as well as to PhD courses (it is the first year that the Admission Commission is responsible for admitting people to PhD courses).

The Znamensk Branch of ASU also reports about a successful admission campaign. 35 applications have been submitted to 30 budget-financed positions.

What is the rating of particular specialties among future students? Dr. Tovarnichenko says: “Mathematics (Pedagogical Education) has been more popular this year than ever – there was a high contest even among “target” entrants. Law Science and Economics are traditionally the most interesting specialties. Besides, we provided 10 budget-financed positions for each of the legal and economical specialties, and that’s why the contest grew rapidly. Primary Education is another popular specialty both for future full-time and distance students. That’s because of new requirements to the qualification level of primary school teachers – now a primary school teacher must have a profile higher education”.

“We’re looking forward to seeing our future students, and we’ll be glad to see them all!” Future students and their parents may contact the Executive Secretary and ask her any question. We’d like to remind that documents to joining a distance education program will be received up to August 09.

Interviewed by N.I. Kirillova (the Innovative Laboratory of Information Linguistics of ASU)