Admission
Oct 09, 2009
Admission to Higher Education
In order to gain admission in Higher Education Institutions, students must have completed the Secondary Education Level and be approved in ‘Vestibular’, a competitive examination to determine whether the student is qualified to enter in a given institution. In 1998, the Brazilian government launched ENEM (Secondary Education Evaluation Exam – Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio). Since then, some HEI´s accept ENEM as part of the admission process.
Since each Institution has a limited vacancy number, and many times, the number of applicants is bigger than the number of vacancies, only the best students are qualified. Some courses in the best Brazilian HEI´s have high competition rates. In Brasília Federal University (Universidade de Brasília) for example, in the medicine graduation course, there were 131 candidates per vacancy in 2008.
In Brazil, it is required that students choose their courses before taking the ‘Vestibular’.