Management topped the list of the most popular majors among Ukrainian applicants in 2025, displacing psychology from the leading position. Demand for economics, philology, and marketing increased significantly, while law and IT programs, on the contrary, lost some of their applications.
Management topped the list of the most popular majors among Ukrainian applicants in 2025, displacing psychology from the leading position. Demand for economics, philology, and marketing increased significantly, while law and IT programs, on the contrary, lost some of their applications.
Forbes Ukraine writes about this with reference to data from the State Enterprise «Inforesurs». The 2025 admission campaign ended on August 1. More than 1.1 million applications were submitted through the YEDEBO system, of which 72% were from school graduates. In total, more than 417,000 applicants registered, which is 11,5% less than last year.
Among the majors that saw a rapid increase in interest were economics (+58%), management (+36%), and philology (+23%). Marketing also showed positive dynamics (+22%). On the contrary, law lost more than a third of applications, and computer science and software engineering lost an average of 5–8%.
The top five most popular universities remained unchanged: Lviv Polytechnic University, Franko Lviv National University, Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, and the State University of Trade and Economics. Despite the overall decrease in activity, these universities received 10% more applications than last year.
Educators attribute the change in priorities to the general uncertainty in the labor market, as well as the growing interest in universal specialties. According to vice-rectors and rectors of leading universities, young people are looking for more flexible educational tracks that allow them to adapt to changes. The competitive score of the National University of Law also plays a role: from 2024, for admission to Law, it is higher than for other specialties (150 versus 130), which reduces the number of applicants.
IT fields, while still important, no longer guarantee a quick start for beginners. The market has become more difficult for beginners, and demand has shifted to experienced specialists. At the same time, some educational programs, such as «Artificial Intelligence» at KPI, still attract applicants.
Every year, the results of the admissions campaign signal the mood of young people and changing market expectations. While previous years saw a boom in legal and IT majors, now there is a growing interest in economics, languages, and management. This may indicate both adaptation to new challenges and the need for more systematic career guidance in schools.
We previously wrote about how the total number of applications from applicants to IT specialties decreased in 2024, which caused IT to drop to second place in the admissions ranking. In addition, Computer Science ranked 5th in terms of the number of applications submitted by applicants, although only in 2022 did this specialty receive the most applications.
