MANILA, Philippines – Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the University of the Philippines (UP) has again canceled its UP College Admission Test for academic year (AY) 2022-2023, the university announced on Tuesday, December 7.

In an advisory on its website, UP said that the University Councils across campuses “voted overwhelmingly in favor” of the decision.

University Councils are the “highest policy-making body” of each UP constituent university composed of the chancellor, professors, associate professors, and assistant professors.

UP said that it will still use the scoring system it adopted in 2020 in assessing freshmen applicants for the next academic year. The said scoring system, however, drew flak as critics observed that the UP Office of Admissions supposedly went “blindly” in its assessment process.

In November 2020, UP announced that its university councils decided to not administer the UPCAT for academic year 2021-2022. Instead, freshmen applicants sent their application forms through an online portal, together with their high school grades, that were used to evaluate them. (READ: UP cancels UPCAT 2021)

In an interview with Rappler in July, UP Office of Admissions director Francisco delos Reyes said that the model they used in evaluating applicants underwent careful vetting and review process by the university’s pool of experts. 

UP admissions director: Other factors considered, not just grades

In AY 2021-2022 alone, more than 100,000 applicants submitted applications to the country’s premier university.

For more than a year, most colleges and universities have been implementing the remote learning system.

UP joins a list of universities that have canceled their entrance examinations again for the next school year due to the pandemic.

On November 16, the government’s pandemic task force approved the phased rollout of face-to-face classes for colleges and universities.

• In Phase 1, all regions under Alert Level 2 may apply to conduct limited face-to-face classes beginning December 2021 and onwards
• In Phase 2, all regions under Alert Level 3 can apply. The implementation period will start from January 2022.

Before the approval of all degree programs to participate in face-to-face classes, the CHED previously only allowed certain programs that required hands-on experience, like medicine and engineering. – Rappler.com