The ten systems
Ten centralized admission systems
The study combines administrative records from ten centralized admission systems. The profiles document allocation rules, application timing, institutional coverage, performance measures, sample construction, sex-differentiated rules, and data provenance.
At a glance
The comparison is based on the institutional tables and setting-specific notes in Appendix A. Cells marked pending · value have not been transcribed from the source material.
| Australia | ATAR, a percentile rank built from scaled subject scores | Yes — lists are finalized after the ATAR is released in December | 12 programs | Clearinghouse (DA family); offer rounds from January | None documented | 2009–2010 | 7,748 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brazil | ENEM score, weighted by program | Yes — ENEM results are released before the SISU window opens | 2 programs | Iterative deferred acceptance; provisional cutoffs updated daily | None documented | 2016 | 271,049 |
| Chile | High school GPA and PSU sections, weighted by program | Yes — PSU scores are released before lists are submitted | 10 programs | Deferred acceptance | None documented | 2012–2018 | 174,020 |
| China | Gaokao total, within province and track | Yes; lists are submitted after scores, quotas, and fees are published | 24 college-major cells | Parallel-choice DA within each batch | None documented | 2018 | 5,203 |
| Finland | Matriculation grades and/or entrance exam | Partly; most applicants already hold a completed certificate, but the entrance exam comes after lists close | 6 programs | Deferred acceptance over admission queues | None documented | 2016-2020 | 34,585 |
| Greece | Panhellenic Examinations (PE) score | Yes — ranked lists are submitted after PE results are released | No numerical limit, within at most 2 of 5 subject categories | Score-ordered allocation along declared preferences (deferred acceptance) | None documented | 2003–2012 | 68,007 |
| Spain | Bachillerato GPA (60%) + EBAU (40%), weighted by program | Yes; students know their exam results when the ranked list is submitted | 12 programs | Score-ordered regional assignment (deferred acceptance) | None documented | 2020-2024 | 85,691 |
| Sweden | Upper-secondary GPA and/or Hogskoleprovet (scholastic aptitude test) | No; the list closes before results are released | 20 programs | Deferred acceptance in two rounds | None documented | 2008-2017 (analysis: 2017) | 10,758 |
| Taiwan | AST subject scores, weighted by program | Yes; lists are submitted after exam scores are released | 100 programs | Program-proposing deferred acceptance | None documented | 2002–2010; analysis uses 2010 | 6,998 |
| Uganda | Official PUJAB weighted score; paper ranks on its own raw-grade index | No; applications precede national-examination results | 6 programs | Merit-order selection | +1.5 points for women since 1990; 40:60 STEM ratio at Makerere; 30:70 at four others | 2021–2022 | 3,187 |
What holds across all ten
- All ten systems rank students on academic performance and assign places through variants of deferred acceptance.
- Deferred acceptance gives applicants little incentive to misreport, so the submitted list is informative about the ordering of programs they were willing to enter.
- List-length caps range from two programs in Brazil to a hundred in Taiwan, and Greece imposes no numerical limit at all.
System pages
- AustraliaVictoria's state clearinghouse allocates every university place in the system on the ATAR, a percentile rank students already hold when they finalize their ranked lists; the analysis covers the 2009 and 2010 application cohorts in a state holding 25% of Australia's population, a strong proxy for the nation.
- BrazilBrazil's federal universities admit through SISU, a national platform running an iterative deferred acceptance over two-program lists with provisional cutoffs updated daily; students apply already knowing their ENEM score. The sample covers the 2016 cycle, with 2.7 million score holders in the federal system.
- ChileChile allocates seats at all public universities and 17 of 43 private universities through a single nationwide deferred-acceptance platform administered by DEMRE; applicants learn their PSU scores before ranking up to ten college-major programs.
- ChinaIn China the study observes the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, a more rural and less developed region holding 0.5 percent of the national population, whose 2018 applicants ranked up to 24 college-major cells after learning their gaokao scores and were placed through a parallel-choice deferred acceptance mechanism.
- FinlandFinland allocates most university seats through a single centralized platform covering 36 of the country's 38 tertiary institutions, where students rank up to six college-major combinations and a deferred acceptance algorithm works through admission queues based on matriculation grades, a university entrance examination, or both. Applications close in March, months before the entrance exam is sat and before final high school grades are known.
- GreeceNearly all Greek tertiary seats are assigned through a national deferred-acceptance system run on Panhellenic Examinations scores, with ranked lists that have no numerical limit but are confined to two of five broad subject categories chosen before ranking.
- SpainSpain's public universities—50 of the country's 86 institutions—allocate seats through a centralized deferred acceptance system based on a weighted average of Bachillerato GPA and the EBAU entrance exam, an exam taken by 81% of an average cohort. Students know their score before ranking up to 12 programs, and places are assigned in score order at the regional level.
- SwedenSweden is one of three settings in the study where centralized admissions cover every university: all 41 institutions admit through a national platform managed by the Swedish Council for Higher Education (UHR), which matches applicants to tuition-free programs by deferred acceptance across parallel admission groups based on high school GPA and the voluntary entrance exam (Hogskoleprovet). The analysis uses the 2017 admission cycle.
- TaiwanTaiwan's centralized clearinghouse, operated by the Joint Board of College Recruitment Commission, assigns students to university-major programs through a program-proposing deferred acceptance algorithm after they have seen their Advanced Subjects Test scores. It covers 65 of the country's 71 general universities; the 77-institution technological and vocational sector forms a separate market outside the data.
- UgandaUganda's centralized platform, the Public University Joint Admissions Board, allocates government-sponsored places at eight of the country's 52 institutions, and applicants rank up to six programs before their national-examination results are released. It is also the setting with the most explicitly sex-conditional admission rules in the sample — rules that favor women and that do not enter the paper's performance measure.