“I dedicated an entire year of my life: hours, days, nights of study, and many sacrifices for a three-hour exam,” complains Karely Ramírez under an umbrella protecting her from the midday sun at Ciudad Universitaria. The 18-year-old participates this Monday in the protest of nearly a hundred applicants to UNAM, the most coveted public university in the country. In front of the rectorate tower converge those whose exam was canceled and those who, despite having passed, must take it again, this time in person. UNAM acknowledged last Friday a high percentage of cheating during the test.
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Each one has a different case or story behind them, but they converge on some demands to the institution: transparency and greater consideration for the well-being of the applicants. Many have been preparing for months or even years and describe the last weeks as a great uncertainty and enormous emotional pressure. The university has delayed the start of classes by a month for new students, who will be known when the test is repeated for 58,000 candidates competing for 21,000 places distributed across 133 degrees, while several questions about what happened with the online exam remain unanswered.
Azul Muñoz Arenas, 17 years old: “The university was not prepared for an online exam”
Selected for Industrial Engineering with 114 out of 120 correct answers, Azul Muñoz took the exam for the career of her dreams for the second time. Years ago she was not admitted to UNAM’s high school, so her family enrolled her “with great sacrifice” in a private preparatory school. “I want to enter UNAM now because it is public and I don’t want my parents to keep paying for my studies,” she shares. Last year she enrolled in two intensive courses, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, in which her family invested about 40,000 pesos. “When I received the news that I had been accepted, I felt super good and very excited. I was already relaxed when I found out I had to retake the exam,” she recounts.
Muñoz asks that applicants who do not want to retake the test not be criticized: “Many say it’s very easy to pass it again, but I think it’s not that, it’s everything behind it, all the nights we stayed up to get a place that is now being taken away from us.” She asks the university to find another solution that does not affect those who passed: “The university had months to review the exams. They should review all the recordings and not force everyone to go through that trauma. The university was not prepared for an online exam,” she complains.
Karely Ramírez, 18 years old: “We want to prove that we are not cheaters”
Karely Ramírez is part of the group of 3,000 applicants whose exams were canceled without explanation. The medical school candidate assures that she never received warnings or notifications during the test and only discovered the cancellation when she checked her results. “On July 17, a C for canceled appeared. To this day, the university does not explain what happened with our exams. I was very careful not to receive notifications, not to make noise, or do anything strange out of fear,” she shares. It was the second time she took the exam and she prepared intensely for a year to get a high score in the most competitive career. She first studied on her own and then took a preparation course that cost 7,000 pesos. “I worked twice as hard knowing the exam would be online and I estimate I had more than 117 correct answers,” she assures.
When the university’s crisis committee presented the report last Friday, it did not explain anything about the canceled exams. “We thought they were going to give us a solution, but they didn’t even mention us,” she laments. They have submitted two petitions demanding an explanation and asking to be allowed to take the in-person control exam as well. She considers it unfair to be left out without evidence “on a platform that clearly does not work” and believes the university could have stopped the process from the first irregularities, without releasing the results. “All we want is to prove that we did study and that we deserve the opportunity to defend our result,” she demands.
Mario González, 21 years old: “They gave us hope and now they want to take our place away”
Mario González scored 93 correct answers and was selected for Communication and Journalism at FES Aragón. He took the exam for the second time and studied on his own for five months with guides and question banks. While preparing, he enrolled in a private university, although his true dream was always to study at UNAM. “When I saw the results, I cried,” he says, “I had finally achieved what I had been looking for.” However, the possibility of retaking the exam fills him with uncertainty. “The exam was months ago, now we don’t have the same study rhythm, I think I don’t have the same chances of getting in,” he says.
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González believes the university had enough time to detect the irregularities and that the authorities have not taken responsibility. “I ask that they respect the place and explain what happened. They gave us hope and now they want to take our place away,” he demands. Retaking the test in person would mean facing a “horrible pressure” again for which he no longer feels prepared.
Fernando Jerónimo Romero Díaz, 18 years old: “Those who did cheat will end up dropping out of the career”
Fernando Romero’s greatest dream is to study and play volleyball at UNAM. After a year of combining his training with study guides, courses, and simulation exams, on July 17 he was admitted to the Mechanical Engineering career with 114 correct answers. But that “selected applicant” on the screen also meant he had to move soon. His family, originally from Toluca, quickly sought to rent a room for him in Mexico City. Days later he learned of the suspension of registrations and that he had to redo the entire process: “I had already passed and now they want to take it away from me.”
He does not oppose because he never fully trusted the online format, but says “the situation affects a lot.” In his case, he already pays for an apartment and left his place at the Regional Technological Institute of Toluca to study at UNAM. The young man believes it was not easy to cheat during the test: “It never crossed my mind to cheat because everything was at stake. I was very nervous,” he says. “Those who did cheat will end up dropping out of the career,” he considers. “The fairest thing is to allow those of us who already passed to enter, and with the others, time will tell,” he says.
Osmir Morán, 19 years old: “In Medicine, one correct answer can change everything”
After two years of preparation, Osmir Morán was just three correct answers away from a perfect exam. In his first attempt the previous year, he applied to all public universities offering medicine, although deep down the one he really wants is UNAM. “It’s very hard not to be accepted,” he shares. He decided to increase the intensity of his preparation and joined private pre-med courses, progressively increasing his study hours: “At first I studied two hours, then the next month, three hours, and so on until reaching six hours a day,” he explains.
When he saw the result he felt relief, mainly because he did not want to represent “an economic burden” for his parents. However, he now lives with “anguish and helplessness” at the possibility of retaking the exam due to cheating accusations. “I am not against retaking it, but it is very stressful because in medicine one correct answer can change everything,” he assures. His career is the most demanded, the hardest to access, and one in which the atypical increase in excellent results in this summer’s exam was most evident. “The university should thoroughly investigate the irregularities before making a generalized decision,” he considers. Morán accuses that the platform was not prepared to support the number of applicants who took the exam.