A total of 3,461,591 people applied for enrollment at Japanese universities in April, up 1.6 percent from a year earlier, according to a recent education ministry poll.
It was the first year-on-year increase in the number of university applicants since the former Education Ministry first conducted the poll in 1993. The figure includes multiple applications by a single person.
The number of people who applied for private universities rose by about 59,000, or 2.1 percent, to 2,859,436, while those for state-run universities fell by some 9,000, or 1.9 percent, to 462,541.
The number of applicants for universities run by local governments rose by some 2,000 to 139,614.
The survey results show that 1 in 4.8 applicants were admitted to state-run universities, unchanged from the previous year, while 1 in 6.8 applicants gained a place at private universities, also the same.
The ratio for local government-run universities stood at 1 in 6.4, down 0.2 percentage point.
The ministry also said that five state-run universities, three institutions run by local governments and 199 private universities selected applicants in the spring without testing their academic ability, relying on interviews or essay writing.