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High School Final Exams Await Students This Week

Hungary Today 2023.05.08.

This morning the high school final exams for Hungarian language and literature took place. In this subject, 72,569 students at the intermediate level and 1,771 students at the advanced level will test their knowledge.

According to the Educational Authority, the May-June matriculation examinations for the 2022/2023 school year started last Friday with the written examinations in the subjects of national language and literature. Over the next few weeks, more than 111,100 students are expected to sit their final exams at 1,163 locations.

On Tuesday, the final exams will continue with mathematics, with 70,394 students testing in the intermediate level and 4,537 in the advanced level.

On Wednesday, 68,131 students will take history at the intermediate level and 7,025 at the advanced level. Then come the foreign language exams: on Thursday, 45,864 at the intermediate level and 18,848 at the advanced level in English; on Friday, 11,537 at the intermediate level and 2,077 at the advanced level in German.

A student taking the Hungarian literature and grammar final exam in a Budapest high school on Monday. Photo: MTI/Bruzák Noémi

The written exams will conclude on May 26, and after that, the advanced level oral exams will be held from June 7-14, and the exam period will end with the intermediate level oral exams between June 19-30.

The graduation exam is a big test for students to get into their chosen universities.

The most important factor in university admissions is how well a student has done in his or her final exams, besides language exam certificates and various competition results.

Public broadcaster M1 channel interviewed several students about the final exams, and most of them said they did not study in the last day and a half, preferring to let the material settle. In addition, the weekend before the final exams was also the weekend of high school graduations, which are regularly accompanied by family celebrations, usually with a festive lunch.

Graduation ceremony in a Budapest school. Photo: MTI/Koszticsák Szilárd

Among the students who take an advanced level exam in a subject, they usually do so because it is necessary for their further studies. In many cases, students prepare for the A-levels with a private teacher in separate lessons, as they require a higher level of knowledge than an intermediate-level exam, which can usually be acquired by studying for regular school lessons.

The Hungarian language and literature exam started on Monday at 9 am, and students had four hours to complete the test. Some parts of this year’s exam have already been published online, so one can see what the students had to do.

Students are required to leave their phones at a given point so that they cannot use them to cheat during the exam. Photo: MTI/Bruzák Noémi

According to a teacher’s opinion published on the Eduline educational website, there is nothing to fear: with careful attention, the students can easily handle both the reading comprehension and the practical writing tasks at the intermediate final exam.

At the intermediate level, the first part of the exam, reading comprehension, was a text about wine by a contemporary Hungarian writer, while the practical writing part was either a bicycle campaign or letter writing.

Eduline also revealed which university courses were the most popular among students. The first subject is the Business and Management course, with more than 14,000 applications. Commerce and marketing came second, and psychology third. Legal studies, finance and accounting, international management, and computer programming also made the top 10.

In total, around 126,000 students applied to study at a Hungarian college or university this year, a much higher proportion than in previous years.

Hungarians Soon To Get Diplomas without Language Exam
Hungarians Soon To Get Diplomas without Language Exam

Until now, many students have been prevented from receiving their diploma at the end of their studies because they did not have a language exam certificate.Continue reading

Featured photo via Facebook/Dr. Dézsi Csaba András


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