UPCAT suspended for third straight year

MANILA, Philippines — The University of the Philippines will suspend for the third consecutive year the UP College Admission Test (UPCAT) for incoming freshmen students.

Admissions director Francisco de los Reyes confirmed the university’s decision in an opinion article published in a newspaper yesterday.

According to De los Reyes, the university councils of eight UP constituent units – Baguio, Cebu, Diliman, Los Baños, Manila, Mindanao, Open University and Visayas – have unanimously approved the resolution forgoing this year’s UPCAT.

The UP Office of Admissions earlier proposed suspending the annual admission test anew in light of concerns about the public health situation.

De los Reyes said the university is facing logistical challenges of ensuring the safety and wellbeing of more than 100,000 expected applicants and around 1,600 personnel who will administer the test nationwide.

The UPCAT was also suspended in 2020 and 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a separate article published on the university’s website, the admissions director also defended the scoring model that the university adopted after UPCAT was suspended.

“Even during normal times, UP cancels out the difference in grading systems among high schools and regions,” De los Reyes was quoted as saying.

“It corrects the difference of grades between more austere schools and those that may have inflated grades. It deals with biases in grading through a system of transmutation and standardization,” he added.

Various sectors have raised concerns over the university’s current admissions system, with Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano noting that high school grades are affected by different grading systems.

De los Reyes explained that the admissions score model is based on a thorough study conducted by a multidisciplinary committee that has a core group of 40 data scientists.

“This is a model that went back to the high school records of 90,000 of UP’s past applicants down to each subject, and studied how these related to how they eventually performed in college,” he said.

“Using lessons from this study, we now utilize patterns and combinations of specific high school grades and other data instead of the UPCAT to come up with the UPG,” he added, referring to the university predicted grade “or the measure by which UP sets the cutoff between qualifiers and non-qualifiers.”

The admissions director said the university would retain the iterative appeals system adopted last year to give those who were not offered admission an opportunity to find a degree program within the UP system.