Thanaweya Amma

Overview

Thanaweya Amma — the General Secondary Education Certificate — is run by Egypt's Ministry of Education and Technical Education at the end of grade 12, the final year of the three-year general secondary stage (grades 10–12). It is one of the country's highest-stakes exams: it is the main route into Egyptian public universities, and its result decides which faculty a student can join through the national coordination ("tansiq") process. Scale is large even on the resit exam alone — over 208,000 candidates sat the 2026 second-round papers — and the first (main) round each year covers the full grade-12 cohort nationwide.

Who can apply

Candidates are students enrolled in grade 12 of general secondary education under the Ministry of Education and Technical Education, having been promoted through grades 10 and 11 in the same track. Students choose between two broad tracks earlier in secondary school and carry that choice through to the final-year exam: the Scientific track (which itself splits into a Science group and a Mathematics group) and the Literary track. Students who did not pass an earlier cycle may resit under a transitional, separate scheme described below.

Exam pattern

For the cohort currently in grade 12, the Ministry's "new system" counts only the final year's result: five written papers per track, for a combined total of 320 marks. A small number of repeat candidates — those who did not pass the second round of the 2024 cycle — continue instead on an older, seven-subject scheme worth 410 marks in total, as a transitional arrangement for that group only.

Scientific track — Science group

Scientific track — Mathematics group

Literary track

Each paper mixes question types rather than running as a single format: about 85% of a paper's marks come from multiple-choice questions, and the remaining 15% from short written-answer questions. Within that, questions are also set to test different skill levels — roughly 30% recall and understanding, 40% application, and 30% higher-order problem-solving. The pass mark on every paper is half of that paper's total (for example 40 out of 80 on Arabic, 30 out of 60 on the other papers).

Marking and results

Each year runs two rounds: a first round (الدور الأول) sat by the full grade-12 cohort, and a second round (الدور الثاني) a few weeks later for candidates who were absent or did not clear specific papers, so a student does not have to repeat the whole year over one subject. For the 2025/2026 cycle, the Ministry approved a first-round pass rate of 75.1% for the new (320-mark) scheme and 72.1% for the old (410-mark) scheme.

A candidate's combined mark is converted to a percentage and fed into the university "tansiq" (coordination) process, run by the Supreme Council of Universities' coordination office together with the Ministry of Higher Education. Admission runs in several successive stages, each with its own minimum cutoff per track and faculty, continuing until seats are filled; cutoffs are set fresh every year based on how many students apply and how many seats are available, and competitive faculties such as medicine and dentistry set cutoffs well above the general minimum. For the 2026 first stage, the reported general minimums under the new scheme were about 91.25% (292/320) for the Science group, 86.09% (275.5/320) for the Mathematics group, and 71.56% (229/320) for the Literary group, while medical-faculty cutoffs for Science-group candidates were reported in the low-to-mid 90s percent.

Important dates

For the 2025/2026 cycle:

• First-round written exams (new system, old system, and exams for blind candidates): 21 June – 16 July 2026.

• STEM schools' own first-round exams: 16 May – 20 June 2026; their second round: 4–22 July 2026.

• First-round results: approved and announced around 28 July 2026.

• Second-round (resit) exams and results: results announced 9 September 2026, after roughly 208,000 candidates sat the second round.

Exact dates are reset by the Ministry each academic year, so students should confirm the current year's schedule on the Ministry's own site closer to the exam.

After the exam

Once a round's results are approved, candidates use their certificate to register for the national "tansiq" university-coordination process, choosing faculties in order of preference within the limits their track and percentage allow. Candidates who are absent from, or do not clear, specific papers in the first round can sit those papers again in the second round rather than repeating the full year.

Preparation tips

Because 85% of every paper's marks come from multiple-choice questions, timed practice across all five papers of a student's track builds the speed and accuracy that drives most of the score. At the same time, the 15% written-answer portion is still worth protecting deliberately, since every paper counts toward the single 320-mark total that decides tansiq placement. Students aiming at high-demand faculties such as medicine, dentistry or engineering should treat each of the five papers as equally important to that total, since the overall percentage — not just passing each paper — is what tansiq compares against the faculty's cutoff.