Ukraine drops motivation letters from 2026 university admissions
The admission campaign to higher education institutions in 2026 will not include such an option as motivation letters, the Ministry of Education and Science reports.
"The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine has generally adopted draft law No. 13650 on the state final certification and the admission campaign in 2026. The document provides for the conduct of the national multi-subject test (NMT) as the main tool for selection to higher education institutions and continues the practice of waiving the mandatory GPA for graduates in wartime," the ministry said in a statement.
It is noted that the Ministry of Education is preparing a package of proposals for the admission procedure with an emphasis on transparency of conditions, support for defenders and residents of the affected territories, digitalization of procedures, and approximation of Ukrainian higher education to European standards in accordance with the Strategy for the Development of Higher Education for 2022-2032.
"One of the key decisions is the abandonment of motivation letters, which have effectively ceased to be a selection tool and were often written with the help of commercial authors or artificial intelligence. The admission procedure will be rewritten in a more understandable structure and language, focused not only on admissions committees, but also on applicants and their parents," the ministry added.
The ministry will call on higher education institutions, student self-government, employers and public organizations to submit proposals to align admission rules with the needs of applicants and the tasks of modernizing the higher education system of Ukraine.
As reported, on December 3, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a draft law in general that determines the format and rules for passing the national multi-subject test (NMT) and the 2026 admission campaign. In particular, the NMT in 2026 will be held according to last year’s model: on one day with the possibility of additional sessions; The list of subjects for the NMT remains unchanged - entrants will take the Ukrainian language, mathematics, history of Ukraine and one subject of their choice: a foreign language, biology, geography, physics, chemistry or Ukrainian literature; all NMT results, starting in 2023, remain valid and can be used when entering in 2026. Also, as in previous years, entrants will not take the state final certification (SFC), and SFC is not provided for at other levels of education.
