Almost 1.55 million people sat the 2025 YKS. When placement closed on August 4, 2025, OSYM had matched 778,298 of them to a university program and left 47,477 seats empty. That gap is worth holding onto before anyone talks about 2026 Turkish university cut-off scores: the numbers move by tens of thousands every single year, and right now nobody has a real 2026 table. Not OSYM, not YOK, not a private consultant. The council only publishes next year's cut-off scores and success rankings once 2026 YKS placement itself is complete.
What you can work with today is the verified 2025 result set, layered against the quota decisions YOK has already announced for 2026. Reading those two things together, rather than waiting for a table that doesn't exist yet, is the actual skill this season. This guide covers both: how to read last year's numbers correctly, and why the 2026 preference period won't look like the one before it, across two-year associate degrees, four-year bachelor's programs, open education, and foundation universities.
In this guide:
- What Cut-Off Scores and Success Rankings Actually Mean
- Why Quotas Are Shifting for 2026
- How the Score Is Calculated for Four-Year Programs
- Two-Year Associate Degrees and Open Education
- State or Foundation University? Occupancy and Cost
- Special Quotas: Who Qualifies
- What This Means for International Applicants
- A Step-by-Step Strategy for 2026
- Frequently Asked Questions
What Cut-Off Scores and Success Rankings Actually Mean
A cut-off score, or taban puan, is simply the placement score of the lowest-ranked candidate admitted to a program the previous year. A success ranking is that same score translated into its national position. The two can describe the same program and still tell wildly different stories about how competitive it is.
Take Ankara University's 2025 placement. Its lowest-scoring accepted program was Folklore, at 224.15702, while Medicine at the same university closed at 526.70477. That's a gap of more than 300 points inside one institution, one city, one admissions cycle. Ask which figure matters more, score or ranking, and the honest answer is ranking. When an exam runs hard, everyone's raw score drops; when it runs easy, everyone's rises. A program's relative position among candidates moves far less from year to year than the raw number attached to it. Medicine, law, engineering, and teacher-training programs add a further wrinkle: a success-rank requirement on top of the score itself, meaning a candidate can clear the point threshold and still miss out for sitting outside the ranking band the program sets.
Why Quotas Are Shifting for 2026
YOK Chair Erol Ozvar addressed this directly at a Higher Education Council meeting held by TOBB, Turkey's Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges, walking through the quota adjustments made between 2023 and 2025 and confirming that reductions continue into 2026. The numbers he gave were specific: an 81 percent quota cut for nanotechnology engineering, 63 percent for artificial intelligence engineering, 49 percent for materials and nanotechnology engineering, 32 percent for industrial design engineering, and 23 percent for geomatics engineering. Marine and marine technologies engineering absorbs a 19 percent cut, geological engineering 8 percent, and automotive and marine engine operating engineering 4 percent.
The reasoning behind the cuts fits in one sentence: programs opened quickly in recent years, occupancy stayed low, and supply outran demand. That has a direct mechanical effect on the ranking a candidate needs. Shrink a program's quota and its required success ranking tightens even if demand holds flat — a candidate who cleared at rank 12,000 one year may need something closer to rank 9,000 the next, simply because fewer seats exist. It cuts both ways. Programs that gained seats in past cycles, like Midwifery after a 517-seat increase, have historically seen their required ranking loosen instead.
How the Score Is Calculated for Four-Year Programs
The YKS placement score for a four-year bachelor's program combines three elements: a fixed base value, weighted net answers from the TYT and AYT exams, and a contribution from the student's high-school achievement score, known as OBP. In 2025 the fixed base for the SAY (science) score type was set at 132.87. TYT nets in Turkish and Mathematics carry a coefficient of 1.32, while Social Sciences and Science nets carry 1.36; AYT coefficients vary further by field.
OBP works differently. A student's diploma grade is multiplied by five to produce a value between 250 and 500, which then feeds into the final score at its own coefficient. Most candidates never run this formula by hand. They compare their raw score against OSYM's cumulative score-distribution data to estimate roughly how many people scored higher, which gives an approximate national rank without touching the underlying math. One structural change matters here too: since 2022, the minimum-score threshold, or baraj, no longer applies. A candidate with a low TYT net can still be placed into open education or certain associate-degree programs, which has made the line between two-year and four-year admission considerably less sharp than it once was.
Two-Year Associate Degrees and Open Education
Associate-degree programs are evaluated on the TYT score alone, which means less exam data goes into the decision compared with a four-year placement. Three institutions run open education at scale: Anadolu University's AOF, Istanbul University's AUZEF, and Ataturk University's ATA AOF. Their cut-off scores sit noticeably below on-campus associate programs, and YOK has signaled it plans to shrink open education's overall share of higher education further, which likely means continued quota reductions here.
For associate-degree graduates, the exit path into a four-year program runs through the Vertical Transfer Exam, or DGS. Applications climbed from 198,450 in 2020 to 252,685 in 2025, an average annual increase of roughly 5 percent. Not everyone who applies actually prepares for it, so the real competition sits within a smaller subset of that total. Some candidates use this deliberately: pick a low-cutoff two-year program on purpose, treat it as a two-year stepping stone, and aim for DGS instead of a first-attempt bachelor's placement.
State or Foundation University? Occupancy and Cost
State university quotas filled almost entirely during the 2025 YKS placement. Foundation, or private, universities told a different story: a striking number of seats went unfilled. Cost is a large part of why. Bilkent University, one of Ankara's oldest foundation schools, set its 2025-2026 tuition at 950,000 TL across all programs, up from 620,000 TL the year before. At the same time, Koc and Sabanci offer fully-scholarshiped students monthly cash stipends of 7,500 to 8,000 TL, though only for a limited number of seats.
Cut-off score alone doesn't decide whether a foundation university makes sense. The gap between 25, 50, and 75 percent scholarship tiers can easily double the total four-year cost of the same program at the same school. Placing the state university's required ranking side by side with the foundation university's fully-scholarshiped-tier ranking, for the exact same field, is what actually settles the decision.
Special Quotas: Who Qualifies
Roughly 20,000 candidates were placed through YOK's special quotas in the 2025 YKS: seats reserved for relatives of martyrs and veterans, for earthquake-affected candidates, and for women over 34. Of the 11,682 extra seats set aside for women over 34, 9,309 were filled, and Child Development was by far the most requested field within that group.
These quotas don't apply everywhere. Programs carrying a success-rank requirement, including medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, engineering, architecture, law, and teaching or guidance-counseling degrees, sit outside their scope entirely. One practical warning: special quotas don't show up as a separate line in a standard cut-off table. A candidate who qualifies but forgets to filter for the right quota type in the preference tool can miss placement even with a score that would otherwise clear.
What This Means for International Applicants
Everything above describes the domestic YKS system, which foreign nationals generally don't sit for. Most public and foundation universities in Turkey admit international students through a separate track, weighing a national exam like YOS, an internationally recognized test such as the SAT, or a high-school diploma with equivalency documentation, depending on the institution. Those applicants are assessed against a distinct international quota with its own cut-off, set individually by each university rather than by a single national table.
That distinction matters more in 2026 than usual. The engineering quota reductions described above target Turkish-national YKS seats specifically, but overall program capacity at public universities is a shared resource. A department cutting its domestic intake by 60 or 80 percent is rarely expanding its international one to compensate. Anyone applying from outside Turkey should confirm current international quotas directly with each university's international office rather than assume the domestic cut-off table says anything about their own chances.
A Step-by-Step Strategy for 2026
The following order works for a candidate holding 2025 data and preparing for the 2026 preference period.
- Step 1: Pull the last three years of success-ranking data for your target program. A single year can mislead you; a trend rarely does.
- Step 2: Flag any program with a confirmed 2026 quota change. The engineering list above only covers one field — check YOK's own announcements for whatever field you're targeting.
- Step 3: Build your 24-choice list in three bands: state universities and fully-scholarshiped foundation options for your target field at the top, partial-scholarship variations of the same field in the middle, and fee-paying options that fit your actual budget at the bottom.
- Step 4: If you're treating an associate degree as a stepping stone, look separately at your target program's DGS transfer quota and its most recent cut-off ranking.
- Step 5: If you qualify for a special quota — women over 34, relatives of martyrs or veterans, or earthquake-affected status — make sure the correct filter is selected in the preference tool before you submit.
A candidate who works through these five steps arrives at the moment OSYM publishes the real 2026 numbers with a list that just needs updating, not one that needs building from scratch.
Frequently Asked Questions
When will 2026 Turkish university cut-off scores be released?
OSYM publishes cut-off scores once 2026 YKS placement itself is finished. In 2025 that release landed on August 4, so candidates should treat verified 2025 data as their working reference until the 2026 table appears.
Is the cut-off score or the success ranking more important?
The success ranking is the more reliable number, because it reflects your position among every candidate nationwide, while the raw score shifts depending on how difficult that year's exam turned out to be.
How does someone move from a two-year program into a four-year one?
Associate-degree graduates transfer through the Vertical Transfer Exam, known as DGS. Applications rose from 198,450 in 2020 to 252,685 in 2025, though only a smaller share actually prepares seriously enough to compete.
Which programs are losing quota in 2026?
YOK Chair Erol Ozvar has said nanotechnology engineering faces an 81 percent cut, artificial intelligence engineering 63 percent, and industrial design engineering 32 percent, with smaller reductions across several other engineering fields.
Should I choose a state or a foundation university?
State university quotas filled almost completely in the 2025 YKS placement, while a noticeable number of foundation university seats went unfilled. The right choice depends on your budget, your scholarship tier, and how your ranking compares at each option.
Heading into the 2026 preference period, the strongest tool available isn't a single year's cut-off score. It's the intersection of three years of ranking trends, the quota decisions YOK has already made public, and your own budget limits. Open YOK Atlas today, pull three years of data for the program you actually want, and run it through the five steps above before OSYM's official 2026 table ever appears.