Only three students were admitted to the integrated master’s program in Medicine at the Abel Salazar Biomedical Sciences Institute of the University of Porto, following the results of the second phase of the National Competition for Access to Higher Education, released today by the Directorate-General for Higher Education.
This is not the only program where students were admitted with grades above 19 on a scale of zero to 20: There are two other courses at the University of Porto and one at the University of Lisbon in a similar situation.
The last student admitted to the Industrial Engineering and Management degree at the University of Porto’s Faculty of Engineering had an average grade of 19.35, placing it second in the ranking.
In third place is another course known for being difficult to enter due to high entry grades, the Aerospace Engineering program at the Instituto Superior Técnico of the University of Lisbon.
In this second phase, only two students were admitted, with the lowest grade being 19.25.
Additionally, four students entered the integrated master’s program in Architecture at the University of Porto, with the lowest average being 19.18.
In total, 29 courses saw 109 students with excellent grades admitted, as students with the lowest average had at least 18.
In the first phase of the competition, Aerospace Engineering at the University of Porto had the highest average grade: 19.43, followed by Medicine, Mathematics Applied to Economics and Management, and Bioengineering, where only students with a minimum average grade of 18 were admitted.
In this second phase and looking at courses with lower averages, 36 courses had students apply with an average below 11 and still secure a place.
At the top of this “table” is the degree in Forestry and Natural Resources at the Agrarian School of Coimbra of the Polytechnic Institute of Coimbra, where only one student entered with 10 points, leaving the remaining 14 places unfilled.
However, there were also 80 other courses offering 1,721 places that did not see any students placed, with the large majority being programs offered by polytechnic institutes and only 14 by universities.
In this second phase of the competition, only half of the more than 16,000 candidates were placed in a public higher education institution, with 9,313 places remaining available for students who apply for the third phase.
Students now placed must enroll between September 15 and 17, while for those attempting the third phase, places will be announced on September 22 on the DGES website.
The data released today indicates that the fields of health and business sciences continue to attract the most young people with 2,614 applicants choosing health-related courses as their first option, with less than half (1,042) securing a place, and 2,594 choosing business sciences, with 1,553 placed.
Adding both phases of the competition so far, there are just over 52,000 freshmen, which is nearly 5,000 fewer students than last year.
