Applying to Türkiye: there is no single entrance exam, but TR-YÖS can be sat in Russian

There is more than one exam, and that is the misunderstanding

The common belief is that applying to Türkiye means "sitting the YÖS". In fact there is no single compulsory exam for international applicants.

Universities accept different grounds: TR-YÖS, the individual YÖS exams some universities run, Abitur, SAT, IB. Which ones count is published by each university on its own site.

So the first step is not booking an exam but settling the list of universities. Sitting the wrong exam here costs as much as sitting none.

What TR-YÖS is

TR-YÖS is the state examination for international applicants. It is administered by ÖSYM, the measuring, selection and placement centre, twice a year.

Two details matter. First, it is held not only in Türkiye but at centres abroad. Second, it is available in several languages — Turkish, German, Arabic, French, English and Russian.

Which removes the language barrier at the entrance-exam stage. Turkish or English comes in later, for the degree itself.

Admission runs on quotas

The second departure from the familiar pattern: places for international students are allocated by quota, and the quotas are published annually by the Council of Higher Education (YÖK) on its site.

So your competition is bounded not only by your marks but by the number of places allocated to your programme. Quotas change from year to year, which makes the current cycle's figures the only relevant ones.

Assembling this into a plan

The order comes out backwards from the usual: universities and programmes first, then their quotas, then which exam those universities accept, and only then the exam booking.

It pays to choose universities that accept the same qualification: one TR-YÖS result then works across several applications. If a university on your list runs its own YÖS, that is a separate date, a separate registration and separate preparation.

What to check now

Open the admissions pages of two or three universities you are interested in and find the list of exams they accept. That is the only source binding on you — general articles, this one included, describe the system rather than your conditions.

Alongside it, look at the quotas for your field this year. Where places are few, it is worth widening the list of universities before you start preparing for any one exam.