Opinion · LGS June 13, 2026

We All Take the Same Exam,
But Are the Conditions the Same?

Ignoring inequality of opportunity is just as wrong as giving up.

2026 LGS by the Numbers

The number of students who walked into exam halls this year: 1,022,658. Of these, 1,022,104 sat in 4,244 buildings across 81 provinces and 920 districts within Turkey, while 554 took the exam at 11 centers in 8 countries abroad.

The exam runs in two sessions. The first session (verbal) begins at 09:30: 20 questions from Turkish, 10 from History of the Republic, 10 from Religious Culture, 10 from English — 50 questions in total, 75 minutes. The second session (numerical) starts at 11:30: 20 questions each from Mathematics and Science — 40 questions, 80 minutes. Total active exam time: 2 hours and 35 minutes.

Important: In LGS, every 3 wrong answers cancel out 1 correct answer. Leaving a question blank when unsure is smarter than guessing.

Before the Race Even Begins

One million, twenty-two thousand, six hundred and fifty-eight students. This morning, every one of them sat down in front of the same questions at the same time. But the journey that brought them to those halls was anything but the same.

On one side are students with private schools, private tutors, multiple study guides, weekend prep courses, and a quiet room they can close whenever they need. On the other side are students sharing a single textbook with a sibling, sitting at the kitchen table after everyone has gone to sleep, sometimes struggling just to find a quiet corner.

"Every student takes the same exam.
Not every student prepares under the same conditions."

Both of these truths exist at the same time. Acknowledging one does not erase the other.

A History Written by Those Who Started Behind

Motivational speeches tend to recycle the same two or three famous names. They are meaningful figures, but they have been repeated so many times that they no longer create a real image in the reader's mind.

So consider this instead: last year, some students who prepared in earthquake zones, living in container cities, sometimes without electricity, still scored high on this exam. We do not know their names. They were not on television. But their success is one of the most real and most powerful stories this country has to tell.

History is full of stories like these. And the common thread is not "a miracle happened against all odds." The common thread is this: even when the starting point was far back, they did not quit along the way.

Of course, none of this is an excuse to ignore the system's failures. Inequality of opportunity is real, structural, and something that must be fixed. But for the student who walked into that exam hall today, this much can be said: the system may not be fair, but that moment in the room belongs to you.

What Is the Real Struggle?

Some students today are not just trying to answer a few questions correctly.

Students who go to school in the morning, study at the same table as their siblings in the evening, carry their family's hopes inside them, and hold on to a dream in the middle of financial hardship — they are also writing their own story.

This is not just about scores. This is about finding the courage to say "yes" where life has been saying "no."

Whatever the result, a struggle like this cannot be measured in points.

And it needs to be said: LGS is not the whole of your life. It is just one stop. Some people pass that stop early, others a little later. But what determines where you end up is usually not the stop itself — it is the decision to keep going.

I Wanted to Write This for You

This piece was written for every student who sat the LGS exam on June 13, 2026.
Especially for those who prepared not with privilege, but with determination.