Overview
Rejected UPCAT Essay Questions (hashtag: #RejectedUPCATEssayQuestions) are questions that were supposedly rejected to be included in the 2012 University of the Philippines College Admission Test (UPCAT). The fictitious exam questions are comical references to popular Filipino culture.
Background
The University of the Philippines College Admission Test (commonly known as UPCAT) is part of the admission requirements of the University of the Philippines (UP), administered once yearly to incoming graduates of Philippine and foreign high schools. UPCAT questions can be in English or Filipino (Philippines’ national language), and is usually held on a Saturday and Sunday in early August with two batches of examinations per day in the morning and in the afternoon. With UP being the country’s premier state university, UPCAT yields the most number of examinees for a college entrance exam in the country; close to 70,000 applicants take the UPCAT every year with only 10,000 of them qualifying.
The 2012 UPCAT, held last August 4 and 5, had an estimated 75,000 applicants, which is expected to be a record high. Usually, the five hour exam covers language proficiency, reading comprehension, mathematics, and science. But for the first time, the exam that year featured a 15-minute essay part. Examples of the questions to be answered in the essay part were: “Narrate the conversation when you encounter an alien”, “If your crush says that he/she loves you, will you say you love him/her, too?”, “What is your favorite study tool?”, and “Tell a lie about yourself and prove it,” according to some students who took the exam. A local news network reported that “the essay questions were included to show the applicant’s leadership competency, an important part of the UP system’s original mission for its graduates.” There was mixed reactions among examinees regarding the essay part, ranging from hilarious to dissapointed.
Immediately after the first batch of examinees finished, the essay part of the UPCAT already became a popular topic of discussion in social networking sites, mainly Facebook and Twitter, among students and alumni of the university. Many of them created their own version of funny essay questions (mostly in Filipino, but there are also English) and tweeted it under the hashtag #RejectedUPCATEssayQuestions, which implies that the said questions were supposedly ‘a pool of rejected questions’ for the 2012 UPCAT. By morning of August 5 (even before the last batch of the 2012 UPCAT has took place), #RejectedUPCATEssayQuestions was already one of the trending topics in Twitter.
Notable Examples
Have you read the terms and conditions?
Why are the birds angry? Explain your answer briefly.
Why will Rick Astley never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down?
What is Victoria’s Secret? Enumerate.
Why does it melt in your mouth and not in your hand?
Is this the real life or is this just fantasy?
Ano ang mas malaki bagpack ni Dora? O bulsa ni Doraemon? Justify your answer. (Which is bigger, Dora’s backpack or Doraemon’s pocket? Justify your answer.)
Twitter
http://mobile.twitter.com/search?q=RejectedUPCATEssayQuestions
https://twitter.com/upsystem/status/231833729159544832/photo/1
References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_the_Philippines_College_Admission_Test
http://upcat.up.edu.ph/htmls/aboutupcat.html
http://www.gmanetwork.com/news/story/268387/news/specialreports/weird-essay-questions-surprise-upcat-takers