Unified college exams held across Japan

TOKYO, Jan. 15 Kyodo -
Unified college entrance examinations were held across Japan on Saturday, the
first of the two-day event with around 560,000 applicants and a record-high 828
universities and colleges set to use the test results in determining
prospective students.
The number of applicants was up by 5,616 from last year to 558,984, according
to the National Center for University Entrance Examinations.
High school students scheduled to graduate in March account for 79.1 percent of
the total applicants, down 0.4 percentage point from the year before when the
share was the biggest on record.
Exams on civics, geography, history, the Japanese language and foreign
languages were held on the first day. Science and mathematics exams are
scheduled for Sunday.
Eleven applicants could not arrive for the exam on time at seven venues due to
delays in train services, including on the JR Tohoku Shinkansen Line.
Ten of them took the exams in different rooms with the starting time later than
the officially schedule. The remaining one applied to take the exam on Jan. 22,
a date set for applicants who fail to show up this weekend due to unavoidable
circumstances.
A total of 105 applicants reported technical problems with IC players used in
the listening comprehension section of the English exam, an option for foreign
language tests, and became eligible for a retest. Of these, 97 applicants at 90
venues retook the listening test.
The IC players have had such problems since the introduction of the listening
section in the English exams in 2006.
An official at a preparatory school for college entrance exam takers said the
economic downturn has created a tendency for more young people to apply to
publicly run schools close to their hometowns.
Universities with science courses or with a special curriculum to earn such
certification as becoming teachers or nurses are also popular due to increased
severity in finding jobs, the official said.
The government began organizing unified exams for national and local
government-run colleges in the 1979 academic year and expanded them in the 1990
academic year for use also by private colleges.
==Kyodo