More engineering and less medicine: this is the choice of freshmen

 

The number of freshmen increases and so does the number of those who prefer scientific departments.

In the academic year 2015/2016 freshmen are 271,119 in total, 6,000 more than last year.  Enrolments increased by 2%, that becomes 3% considering only the freshmen not older than 19 years.

The scientific field has been chosen by 50% of male students, whereas the 35% of female students has preferred the social department.

In comparison to the previous year, there has been a decrease in applications for the health department, in particular medicine, while the appeal of engineering and  geo-biology has increased. Also law is not so popular any more.

For the first time after years of negative trend, the percentage of 19-year-old freshmen, who enrol right after their graduation, has increased. The passage rate, however, is different in several areas of the country, with a maximum in the North-West (54.1 %) and a minimum in Sicily and Sardinia (43.6 %). The regions with the highest passage rate are Lombardy, Liguria, Marche, the Abruzzi and Molise.

The decision is also influenced by grades (90% of the excellences choose to continue studying, whereas the percentage drops to 22% among those who obtained a grade of 60/100) and the course of studies (the distribution of freshmen shows that most of them graduated from a high school). The percentage of people who follow a vocational education (there are also alternatives such as ITS or AFAM) is low, however it is higher among technical graduates.

Young students who come from a secondary school focusing on humanities choose mainly the legal field (19.1%) and the literary one (13.5%); those who graduated  from a secondary school focusing on sciences or a secondary school of this type, with the option of the so-called “applied sciences”, choose engineering, economics and statistics, geo-biology and medicine.

The 34.5% of students graduating from a secondary school focusing on languages continue with this kind of studies and those who graduated from a secondary school focusing on human sciences prefer the teaching area or political and social studies.

Students who attended a practical school and want to go to university choose courses that are strictly connected with their studies. Students with a school-leaving certificate in the economic sector, specifically regarding management, finance and marketing, choose mainly economics and statistics (45.3%); on the other side, those with a certificate in tourism choose the linguistic field (30.3%).

Those students who graduated from a school focusing on technology enrol at universities that offer specific courses, which are connected with what they studied, and this underlines  a good and efficient guidance. Those who graduated from a school focusing on industry and handicraft and want to go on with their studies, prefer the fields of economics and statistics and engineering.

It is interesting that those students with a certificate in services for agriculture and rural development, and services for wine and food and hotel hospitality choose the agricultural field, especially those courses that deal with food science and technology and with economics and business management.

It can be confirmed that in the north of Italy there are more graduated students who stay in the same geographical area, whereas students in the south of the country and on the isles move to other places for studying: one out of four decides to go to universities that are in the centre or in the north of Italy.