THE UNIVERSITY will sift through aspiring Thomasians for Academic Year (AY) 2022 to 2023 using the University of Santo Tomas Admission Rating (USTAR) anew, the Office for Admissions (OFAD) announced on Wednesday.
USTAR was first implemented instead of the traditional University of Santo Tomas Entrance Exam (USTET) in 2020, prior to AY 2021 to 2022.
“For the Academic Year 2022-2023, the [USTET] will not be administered in consideration of the quarantine restrictions that are currently in effect in the country,” OFAD said on its website.
Unlike USTET, the USTAR is a score-based evaluation system based largely on the academic performance and records of an applicant.
Applications for college and senior high school will run from Sept. 1 to Dec. 15, months that are usually allotted for the USTET pre-pandemic.
Meanwhile, applications for the Learning-Enhanced Accelerated Program for Medicine or LEAPmed, UST’s six-year medicine program, will run from Sept. 1 to Nov. 30.
The decision to not conduct entrance exams reflects uncertainty over the country’s return to normalcy amid a new surge in Covid-19 cases due to the more contagious Delta variant
Last year, UST received 48,411 applications for the USTAR, out of which 7,772 college freshmen and 3,054 Grade 11 students were admitted.
