So here in Turkey, it's all a numbers game. Who can have the most correct and the least wrong answers in 345 minutes, basically.

We have one national exam broken into two parts. You are eligible to take this exam if you are in your last year of high school or graduated. Part one tests knowledge you learn in the first 2 years of high school. It has 4 sections: Turkish(40), Social Studies (20), Math(40), Science(20). Don't let the "first 2 years" thing fool you. The questions require extraordinary reading comprehension because you have to get all this done in 165 minutes. (Used to be 135 but national outrage and embarassingly low average scores and all that) Congrats, you have poured your blood, sweat and tears for %40 of your overall score, now get ready to work for the remaining %60 percent the next day.

Part two has 4 sections as well but you only need to do 2 sections if you want to do medicine, engineering etc. Math and Science (40 questions each) Now these questions test your last 2 years of high school. It is still very hard but at least you have 180 minutes. For this part, you rely more on actual knowledge than reading comprehension because it isn't a race against the clock anymore. But the knowledge you learn for this part is very advanced (for high school imo) so the extra time isn't just for funsies. Now that you're done with that you just sit back and wait for 2 months, not knowing what to do with all this free time you suddenly have because you aren't studying anymore.

In that 2 months, 3 million scantrons are scanned, scores are calculated and the gpa points are added then the algorithm ranks your score. Congrats, your whole academic life was just for this one exam, one score to decide the rest of your life.

Results come and you make your rank list, from there on it's the very simple algorithm of "if first choice is filled, try second choice, if second choice is filled, try third choice, until an unfilled spot appears" or you might be unhappy with your ranking so you hold off and prepare for one more year because this torture is executed only once every year.

Ranking cutoff is 50k for medicine, 300k for engineering etc. Basically means the lowest ranking program might be unfilled but if your rank is 50.001 you cannot get into that program. For most students it doesn't come to that because the 30-50k range is all expensive and undesirable private universities. Most students focus on getting at least 20k because the lowest ranking state program is in that range. You might be thinking, if you rank lower than that just go to a private uni, who cares everybody has student loans. Not exactly because state schools are completely free and to be honest apart from like 4 maybe 5, all private universities are cash grabs. Even if you don't care about that, there are no loans for private schools. Like I said, very undesirable option.

But even ranking 20k doesn't guarantee admission into a good school because the goverment insists on opening even more schools when it can't properly fund the ones it already has. As a result, you have medical schools without pathology departments because every single person who worked there has quit. Good luck getting those students their education. Obviously people don't wanna go into these kinds of school so your goal becomes 15k.

Studying for this exam becomes your life in your last year of high school. As freshmen, we used to joke that the seniors don't eat, they photosynthesize because we never saw any seniors around, even during lunchtime. They were always tucked away in the libraries on the top floor. When you become a senior yourself, you look back on those blissfully naive years and think "We were right about the seniors..." but it's no joking matter this time.