ALES

Overview

ALES (Akademik Personel ve Lisansüstü Eğitimi Giriş Sınavı, the Academic Personnel and Postgraduate Education Entrance Exam) is a Turkish national test run by ÖSYM. It gives the scores used for appointments to some academic staff posts (lecturer, instructor, research assistant and similar), for entry to postgraduate programmes in Turkey, for selecting candidates sent abroad for postgraduate study, and for engineering completion programmes for technical teachers. The exam is in Turkish and measures reasoning, not subject knowledge from a particular degree.

Who can apply

You can apply if you are about to graduate from a bachelor's programme, have finished one, or hold a foreign bachelor's degree with an equivalence certificate.

Exam pattern

There is one session of 150 minutes starting at 10:15, with two multiple-choice tests:

Questions are written so that graduates from any field can answer them. The exam is held in the 81 provincial centres, and ALES/1 is also held in Lefkoşa and Bishkek.

Marking and results

• Raw score is the number of correct answers minus one quarter of the number of wrong answers, calculated separately for each test.

• Raw scores become standard scores (mean 50, standard deviation 10), which are then combined into three weighted scores and rescaled to a 100-point scale.

• Results are valid for 5 years from the date they are announced.

• Typical uses of the score: 70 out of 100 in your field's score type to qualify for lecturer and research assistant appointments; at least 55 for master's programmes and at least 80 for doctoral programmes entered with a bachelor's degree, with universities free to ask for more and required to give ALES a weight of at least 50 percent when it is used in selection. Some programmes do not ask for ALES, so check each programme.

Important dates

Three sittings are held in 2026:

Fees

For 2026 the exam fee is 1,200 TL. If you apply on the late application day, the fee is 50 percent higher. Fees are not refunded if you do not take the exam. Spouses and children of martyrs and veterans, and veterans themselves, pay no application service fee or exam fee.

How to apply

Apply during the application period through an ÖSYM application centre, the Candidate Transactions System (ais.osym.gov.tr) or the ÖSYM mobile app, and pay the exam fee by the payment deadline (the day after applications close) or the application is not complete. Download your admission document from ais.osym.gov.tr about 10 days before the exam and bring it with photo ID.

After the exam

Results are published at sonuc.osym.gov.tr with your ID number and password. Universities and institutions then use your score for their own selection, so send or use it according to the rules of the programme or post you want.

FAQs