The University of the Philippines College Admission Test 2021 is officially canceled, the University Councils of the eight constituent universities of the University of the Philippines System announced today, November 10. Prior to this development, other universities such as Ateneo de Manila University and University of Santo Tomas have announced that they're suspending their own annual college entrance examinations for school year 2021 to 2022.
An online UPCAT is also not considered "due to the length of the exam and variety of items that would require a consistently strong Internet connection to download within the time allotted for examinees to answer."
UPCAT 2021 would have been administered from October 10 to 11 if there wasn't a pandemic. The Office of Admissions is set to start the application period in December 2020. Exact guidelines and dates have yet to be announced.
The suspension of the upcoming UPCAT 2021 drew mixed reactions from former, current, and future students of UP. Some are disappointed over wasted time and effort for their UPCAT reviews and enrollment in review centers.
Others, however, are scared of the requirements to be considered for admissions.
The UPCAT is known to draw more than a hundred thousand of aspiring students who wish to have a shot in becoming a"Iskolar ng Bayan." The university drew an all-time high of 167,000 applicants in 2018 for school year 2019 to 2020, which is a significant spike from the previous number of 103,000. This sudden increase is attributed to promise of free tuition following the passage of Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act in August 2017. The UPCAT is offered in a number of testing centers across the Philippines.
This story originally appeared on Spot.ph.
* Minor edits have been made by the Candymag.com editors.
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