A. I. Pykhtin - Ph.D. (Eng.), South-West State University (Kursk)
O. V. Ovchinkin - Programmer of methodological and information technology, South-West State University (Kursk)
I. A. Zeveleva - Engineer of methodological and information technology, South-West State University (Kursk)

At the current time admission to universities is carried out on the results of the Unified State Exam as this is a basic way to test graduates - knowledge. Legislatively the budget allocation of places for bachelor and master degrees and specialties is approved in accordance with federal state educational standards. To strengthen monitoring all universities are obliged to contribute information about each candidate to the federal information system. To distribute the vacant places is a difficult task for an admitting committee of an educational institution. The essence of this task is to enroll students under the conditions of absence of a unified formal mechanism for selecting the best prepared ones to continue their education. The essence of competition is to distribute the lots of candidates for the available places financed from the federal budget. Each contender participates in the competition for a certain set of vacant places. The contender arranges vacancies according to his or her preferences based on priorities. To rank candidates we input the evaluation function consisting of terms taking into account the results of previous applicant evaluation, assessment of "portfolio" of the applicant to eliminate arising conflicts. Thus, we have to solve the task of multi-objective general objective function optimization which should satisfy some criteria: select the best prepared candidates to continue their education and take each applicant for no more than one specialty with the highest possible priority and observe restrictions on the number of available vacancies. As the main criterion we chose the target function of the university corresponding to taking the best prepared candidates. Next we base on the given algorithm and determine the matrix suboptimal enrollment. According to the results of nationwide competition held on the basis of the results of the Unified State Exam each student is given a certificate attesting the fact that the applicant has earned the right to study at the expense of the federal budget and the applicant himself may choose an educational institution if the points he or she scored are enough for it. This approach allows us to determine which educational institution has more prestige among the entrants. Thus, the article suggests an algorithm of the nationwide competition in the system of higher education which allows choosing the best prepared candidates and ranking the educational organization.