Starting this weekend, tens of thousands of young people will take the admission exam at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (UNMSM) in search of a vacancy. And, in the midst of a transformation of the labor market driven by artificial intelligence, the careers that most attract applicants to the Dean of America are no longer the same as they were a few years ago.
ECData analyzed more than 210 thousand records of the last eight regular admission exams of the UNMSM (2023-I to 2026-II) to know how the demand moved for the different careers on offer at San Marcos.
Change preferences
Between 2023 and 2026, some races suffered significant drops in the number of applicants. Applicants for Social Communication, for example, were reduced by more than half: from 1,257 to 611.
Software Engineering candidates were reduced by half (from 1,496 to 754). In Systems Engineering, the drop was 41% (from 3,225 to 1,908).
Six other majors with 300 or more applicants in 2023, including Civil Engineering, Administration and Psychology, also lost 15% or more of their demand.
*For the ranking, only races with 300 or more applicants registered in 2023 were considered.
Source: UNMSM, results of the Regular Basic Education admission exams, from 2023-I to 2026-II. Preparation: ECData.
On the other side, the demand for certain careers grew significantly. Secondary Educationfor example, went from 444 applicants in 2023 to 695 in 2026, an increase of 57%.
*For the ranking, only races with 300 or more applicants registered in 2023 were considered.
Source: UNMSM, results of the Regular Basic Education admission exams, from 2023-I to 2026-II. Preparation: ECData.
They follow him Tax Management (+38%), Dentistry (+35%), Political Science (+31%), Mining Engineering (+28%) and Organizational Psychology and Human Management (+27%).
Human Medicine It continues to be the most in-demand career and gained slightly ground: in 2026, it represented 17% of the total applicants for the Dean of America, compared to 16.5% in 2023.
Source: UNMSM, results of the Regular Basic Education admission exams, from 2023-I to 2026-II. Preparation: ECData.
Luis Arias, study coordinator at the Center for the Analysis of Public Policies in Higher Education (CAPPES), attributes the drop in applicants in Software and Systems careers to possible difficulties in keeping technological resources updated in a public university, as well as to uncertainty about the future employment of these professions in the face of advances in artificial intelligence.
“On the one hand, it may be competition at a private level. These are careers that, although they do not require an infrastructure as advanced as medicine, do require laboratories and, above all, valid licenses or software. (…) Added to this is another ‘boom’ that we are experiencing, which is the issue of AI. There are careers such as Systems or Software that, at a global level, have fallen significantly in terms of employability, because AI is replacing that type of jobs.” explains.
The fight for the vacancy: How many apply and how many enter?
Although tens of thousands of Peruvians take the entrance exam to San Marcos, few finally get a place. In the eight exams analyzed, on average, only 12 out of every 100 applicants managed to enter.
No minimum points floorWith a minimum floor of 900 points
Applicants registered by exam
Entrance rate by exam (% of registered applicants)
Hover or tap a column to see the details of each exam.
Source: UNMSM, results of the Regular Basic Education admission exams, from 2023-I to 2026-II. Preparation: ECData.
The lowest entry rate occurred in the first exam of 2024: 28,862 applied (the highest number of the period), but only 2,124 entered, just over 7%. That year, the University established a minimum score of 900 points to enter, and allowed a second career option for those applicants who, despite obtaining an outstanding score, did not obtain a vacancy in their first option. Even counting the 815 applicants who entered through that second option, the entrants in 2024 totaled 4,754, 26% less than in 2023 (6,435).
At the other extreme, the last admission exam – taken in March of this year – recorded the highest admission rate since 2023: 4,764 of 25,880 applicants entered. That is, the 18.4%.
No minimum points floorWith a minimum floor of 900 points
Source: UNMSM, results of the Regular Basic Education admission exams, from 2023-I to 2026-II. Preparation: ECData.
How difficult is it to enter your career?
The competition is not the same in all races. In Human Medicine, 4,350 registered applicants competed in 2026-II for 88 entrants. In other words, for every person who entered, 48 were left out.
The following tool shows these indicators for any of the 86 careers that have been offered since 2023. It also includes the vacancies established by the regulations of each exam, including that of 2027-I.
- Choose a career from the list or type its name in the search engine.
- You will see three indicators: how many registered applicants there were for each applicant in the last exam, the score with which the last applicant entered and how the vacancies evolved.
- Hover or tap the graph columns to see the details of each exam.
Source: UNMSM, results of the Regular Basic Education admission exams, from 2023-I to 2026-II. Preparation: ECData.
Fourteen new careers in three years
Over the years, UNMSM has added different courses to its academic offerings. Since 2024-I, when Computer Science appeared, 14 were added.
Altogether, the new races brought together 5,465 applicants registered in 2026, around 10% of the year’s total. Eight belong to the field of Engineering and account for close to 70% of those applicants.
Architecture and Urbanismwhich debuted in 2025-I, leads with 1,109, followed by Logistics Engineering and Digital Supply Chain (696) and Mechatronic Engineering (646).
Hover or tap an area or race to see the detail.
It includes the 14 careers that opened vacancies for the first time between the 2024-I and 2026-II processes (with respect to the base offer of the 2023 cycle). The applicants add processes 2026-I and 2026-II.
Source: UNMSM, results of the Regular Basic Education admission exams, from 2023-I to 2026-II. Preparation: ECData.
According to Arias, universities must not only consider the preferences of young people when designing their academic offerings, but also evaluate whether there is labor demand for the careers they offer.
“Universities have to take into account what the youth population demands, but it is also important, and that is what I think many universities lack, to map labor demand. Because kids may want to study a career, but if the labor market does not ask for it, because our productive system does not demand that, bottlenecks are generated that the people who are studying end up paying for.” indicates.
What’s coming: the 2027-I exam
The exam regulations 2027-I fixed 2,581 vacancies in all venues, 190 less than in 2026-I. In addition, it once again establishes a minimum score to reach a vacancy, this time according to the area: 900 points in Health Sciences and Engineering, 700 in Basic, Economic and Management Sciences, and Humanities and Legal-Social Sciences; and 600 in the faculty sections and the Villa Rica branch. It is the first minimum score since 2024, when one of 900 points was in effect for all races.
