THE ASAHI SHIMBUN
January 18, 2025 at 15:10 JST
Students sit for the unified university entrance exam on Jan. 18 in Nishinomiya, Hyogo Prefecture. (Emiko Arimoto)
Close to half a million university aspirants across Japan began two days of unified entrance exams from Jan. 18. This year, new subjects were included in the test.
The exam is the first to reflect changes in the senior high school curriculum that were implemented from the 2022 school year.
A key addition is the Information subject on this year’s exam. Also, a new exam subject was established by combining geography and history with civics.
Because no previous tests have been given in these two subjects, exam takers had no reference point in preparing for the test.
About 495,000 people submitted applications to take this year’s exam, an increase of 3,000 or so from last year, which marked the first time in 32 years that the number of exam takers fell to under half a million.
A total of 838 higher education institutions, including junior colleges, will utilize the exam results in making admission decisions. The figure is a decrease of 26 from last year.
Public universities require applicants to take the unified entrance exam, which is designed to measure a student’s basic academic ability.
The new Information subject exam will be given on Jan. 19, along with the natural sciences and math.
The subjects to be tested on Jan. 18 are geography, history and civics; Japanese language; and foreign languages.
(This article was written by Amane Shimazaki and Hajime Ueno.)
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