Sunday 02 / November / 2025
Muscat: The Higher Education Admission Centre of the Ministry of Higher Education, Research and Innovation announced on Sunday the start of the registration period for the Second Sorting Round for the academic year 2025/2026, which will continue until Sunday, 9 November 2025.
The number of vacant seats available for the Second Sorting Round totals 2,962 academic seats across: internal scholarships and grants in private higher education institutions, external scholarships and grants, Sultan Qaboos University (SQU), Oman College of Health Sciences, University of Technology and Applied Sciences, vocational colleges, and private training institutions.
The Centre clarified that the Second Sorting Round targets students who obtained the General Education Diploma (GED) or its equivalent for the academic year 2024/2025 who are either not permanently registered in the system, were not accepted in the first round, or withdrew from an accepted offer.
It stated that students who have already been accepted into a study seat and have completed the registration procedures are ineligible to compete in this round. For students holding equivalency certificates for the GED and international qualifications from within and outside the Sultanate of Oman, they must upload a copy of their transcript, ID card, and the Ministry of Education's equivalency certificate to their registration page no later than Saturday, 8 November 2025, to be eligible to compete for the second round vacancies.
The Centre noted that the repetition of the sorting process is to utilise study seats that became vacant after the first round, either because there were no applicants or because some applicants rejected the seat offers presented to them in the previous sorting round.
It advised that the options listed in previous registration stages will not carry over to their registration page for the Second Sorting Round; therefore, students must re-add all study programs they wish to compete for. Furthermore, to compete for programs at SQU, external scholarships and grants, and health specialisations, the student's competitive average for the program must be equal to or higher than the last competitive average accepted in the first round.
The Centre indicated that the testing process for candidates nominated for programs that require them will take place from Thursday, 13 November, to Monday, 17 November 2025. The admission results for the Second Sorting Round for the academic year 2025/2026 will be announced on the evening of Wednesday, 19 November.
It added that after the Second Sorting Round, the Centre will make available the seat retrieval service from Tuesday, 25-27 November. This will be followed by registration for private expense seats at SQU for the second sorting round on 9-10 December.
