(Eagle News) — The University of the Philippines will not be administering its College Admissions Test for the academic year 2022 to 2023.
In suspending the conduct of the UPCAT for the second consecutive year, UP, through Memorandum No. OVPAA 2021-158 released by the Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs on November 18, cited “immense logistical challenge” of administering the test “in the UP campuses and 95 testing centers throughout the archipelago while the trajectory of the pandemic remains uncertain.”
UP said the university councils across the UP System voted “overwhelmingly” in favor of the motion.
According to the UP Faculty Manual, the university councils are the highest policy-making body of each UP constituent university.
Each university council is composed of the Chancellor, professors, associate professors, and assistant professors of each constituent university.
UP said for academic year 2022 to 2023, it will instead use the “admissions model used by the UP Office of Admissions’ for the first-year student intake of AY 2021-2022..” but “with some fine-tuning in the preprocessing and transmutation of grades that enter the model.”
The first time UP suspended the conduct of its college admissions test amid the pandemic was in 2020.
UPCAT 2021 was supposed to be administered in the third quarter of that year but UP’s eight constituent universities unanimously voted against the conduct of the test, citing “logistical issues in the paper-and-pencil testing of about 100,000 17-year old applicants” amid COVID-19.