Why Get a Master's Degree After 10 Years in IT - and How ЄВІ 2026 Tested That Decision

I already have an IT degree and 10 years of experience in development, but no master's diploma. And since a master's degree is still fairly well regarded abroad, I figured, why not close that gap while I have the chance. My friends and I registered together and turned it into a small competition: whoever scores the most points. Motivation went up considerably the moment it wasn't just about getting in, but also about bragging rights.

To get in, I needed to pass three exams: ТЗНК (a general skills test), a foreign language test, and, since I'm aiming for an IT-related master's program, also ЄФВВ in information technology. ТЗНК and the foreign language test happen on the same day, ЄФВВ on a different one. All the details about dates, exam rooms, and results are available in the personal account on zno.testportal.com.ua.

ТЗНК and the foreign language test - no surprises

You get 2 hours for these two exams combined. The passing score is 5 for each exam separately. The questions turned out fairly similar to the practice examples that were on the test portal beforehand, so there were no real issues. Format, difficulty, question types, all matched what I'd prepared for using the demo versions. Honestly, it went by almost boring, no drama at all, exactly how a normal exam should feel.

ЄФВВ - the moment I mentally decided I wasn't going to pass

ЄФВВ gives you 3 hours, since there are 140 questions, and you need 35 points to pass. Since I've been working in IT for 10 years, I glanced at the demo tests a couple of times, took them, and scored more than half correct. I figured, alright, this is just a formality, in and out.

The first few questions looked completely normal. Then, somewhere around question five or six, it started to dawn on me: something's off here. Not because I didn't know anything, quite the opposite actually, a lot of this I'd genuinely studied at some point. Computer architecture, computing systems design, higher math, even some AI theory, all of it I'd gone through and understood at some point. But when was the last time I actually used graph theory at work? When was the last time I sketched out a processor diagram instead of just writing code that interacts with it somehow through ten layers of abstraction? This is knowledge that lives more in conversations like "remember that from university" than in day-to-day tasks. It hadn't disappeared entirely, it had just gathered dust somewhere in the back of my memory while I spent years writing business logic and refactoring APIs.

Having flipped through all 140 questions ahead of time, because yes, I'm the type who first looks at the full scope of the disaster, I had mentally already written my own eulogy. 35 points suddenly felt out of reach, even though it's really just a quarter of all the questions answered correctly. But panic isn't great at doing math, especially when you're staring at a question that requires recalling something you haven't touched in about five years.

Pulling myself together, I switched to a different strategy: logically eliminate the obviously wrong options and keep only what logically fits. And here's the interesting part, even half-forgotten knowledge rarely disappears completely, it lingers at the level of "that's definitely not it" even when "so what is it" no longer comes to mind. The method turned out to work surprisingly well: crossing out two obviously absurd options and choosing between two real ones is a completely different kind of math. What I knew for sure, I answered quickly, to save time for the questions that genuinely needed thought. What I'd nearly forgotten entirely, I either eliminated the obviously wrong options the same way, or honestly left it to chance and guessed, mentally negotiating with the universe over my 35 points.

What was happening around me added to the anxiety. This was written in a room together with other applicants, and I could see others confidently moving question by question, not skipping a single one. Against my own inner panic, that felt especially bleak, the classic feeling that everyone around you clearly knows something you don't, even if in reality half of them were probably just confidently guessing too.

I finished in about half the allotted time. Clicking "submit," the one thing I wanted most was to see a number bigger than 35 on the screen. You see the result immediately, no agonizing waiting period, you're either instantly happy or instantly not. Luckily, it came out to 70 points, twice the minimum threshold. I exhaled like I'd been holding my breath for the past three hours and thought, alright, that's behind me now. Now all that's left is waiting to see if I beat my friends in our little unofficial competition.

What I took away from this experience

Demo tests are a convenient illusion of control. They test the format, not the depth, and the more confident you feel after them, the more painful it is to realize on the actual exam how much concrete knowledge has quietly gathered dust over years of working in a narrow specialization.

If I were preparing for something like this again (or advising a friend going down the same road), here's what I'd do:

  • Not rely on demo tests alone as an indicator of real difficulty, demos test the question format, not how deep your knowledge actually needs to go
  • Brush up on the fundamentals ahead of time, even the ones that feel like "I already know this," architecture, graphs, math, precisely because a developer's day-to-day work rarely requires recalling these directly
  • Mentally prepare for the fact that knowledge you haven't used in a while surfaces slower than expected, and that this is a normal part of the process, not a reason to panic
  • Have a strategy like "eliminate the wrong answer, don't search for the right one" ready before you actually need it, panic isn't the best moment to invent a method on the fly

Prepare for the worst-case scenario ahead of time. Not because you're guaranteed to forget everything, but because knowledge you don't use daily has a habit of hiding exactly when you need it most.