How to Get into SESC UrFU, the Ural Genius Factory
For now, teenagers study in the old building at 30 Danila Zvereva Street, on the outskirts of Pionersky — but in September they will move to a new luxurious school in the Novokoltsovsky district.
SESC UrFU (the Specialized Educational and Scientific Center of Ural Federal University) can undoubtedly be called a Ural genius factory. No other school in Yekaterinburg has such a high number of students who score 100 on the Unified State Exam, winners and prize-winners of academic Olympiads, and successful graduates.
Essentially, SESC is neither a public nor a private school, but an educational institution attached to a university.
However, studying here is not easy — you have to pore over textbooks from morning till night and spend hours in laboratories. We tell you who has a real chance of getting into SESC and why more is demanded of students here than of adults.
SESC holds leading positions in the ranking of Russia«s best schools by RAEX.
A resource center is a school that compensates for missing material, technical, educational, developmental, creative, and other resources on its own. For example, by inviting other children and teachers, and concluding agreements with partners (including universities, colleges, and enterprises).
Parents do not pay for meals in the school canteen.
There are six educational resource centers in Yekaterinburg in total. In the series on E1.RU «Yekaterinburg»s Best Schools« we cover each of them.
Children are fed from three to six times a day.
How SESC differs from a regular school
Those who score the maximum number of points take the top positions. Then it all depends on the number of vacancies in a particular profile.
Studying at SESC UrFU is not for every child. Students here face a colossal workload.
Yulia Kazantseva, head of the competitive selection department at SESC UrFU, explained the enrollment rules to E1.RU.
Classes at SESC UrFU start at 09:00 and end at 15:15, but no one rushes home or to the dormitory — Olympiad preparation follows immediately after.
The new SESC UrFU building has 63 classrooms, a library, and 29 modern laboratories.
The history of SESC UrFU began in 1989 when lyceum classes opened at Ural State University (UrSU). The next year, in 1990, a school for gifted children was opened based on these classes. In 2011, SESC UrFU became a structural subdivision of the university.
Strong Olympiad preparation is a hallmark of SESC UrFU. In 2025, among its students, there were 30 prize-winners and winners of the All-Russian Olympiad for Schoolchildren, including three winners and six prize-winners in biology.
SESC UrFU is the only educational organization in Yekaterinburg with a dormitory. Places in the boarding school are limited and are primarily allocated to non-residents, those living in remote districts of Yekaterinburg, as well as privileged categories — children from large families and participants of the special military operation.
Tuition, meals, accommodation — parents do not have to pay for these, and they feed students here even more often than in a regular school. Those living in the dormitory eat six times a day, other students — three times.
How to get in and is the competition high?
Admission to SESC UrFU is possible starting from the 8th grade and only through a competitive selection process. All candidates take entrance exams, which vary depending on the study profile — and there are many of them.
Below is the full list for the 2026/2027 academic year.
Yulia Kazantseva, head of the competitive selection department at SESC UrFU, told us how the selection process works. If an applicant scores the required number of passing points, they can participate in the selection; others are eliminated at the first stage.
This threshold changes from year to year, and the exact numbers will be known after everyone takes the exam. The maximum score for the entrance exams is 50. Then a ranking of applicants is compiled and lists of those recommended for enrollment are formed.
How to prepare for the test? The SESC UrFU website has the program and archive of past entrance exam tasks. By reviewing them, you can understand if the exam will be manageable for the child. Another option is to take preparatory courses for admission to SESC.
«40% of those who study in our courses successfully pass the entrance exams. This figure is limited by the number of available places,» noted Yulia Kazantseva.
Participation in Olympiads is a good help. For some of them, an applicant can get an «automatic pass» — for example, for winning or placing as a prize-winner at the regional stage of the All-Russian Olympiad for Schoolchildren in Physics, the applicant will immediately receive 50 points for that subject profile, but they will still need to take the second exam. For other achievements, they can add from 1 to 5 points.
Important: additional points are only added if, based on the entrance exam results, the child has crossed the threshold of the minimum passing score.
Currently, 750 students study at the prestigious school. Of these places, 175 are for students in grades 8-9, and 575 are for grades 10-11. It will only become known at the end of February which profiles will have available spots and how many.
A bit of statistics for parents. By the number of applications received, the ranking of the most in-demand profiles looks like this:
8th grade physics and mathematics class (165 applications);
9th grade physics and mathematics class (162 applications);
10th grade mathematics and computer science class (148 applications).
The greatest competition was in the 9th-grade mathematics and computer science and chemistry and biology classes. The fact is that SESC opens fewer available places in these fields than in others.
Document submission for the competition will run from February 1 to March 15. Those admitted in 2026 will start studying on September 1 in the new SESC building in Novokoltsovsky.
How the move will proceed
Many parents are already worried about how to get their children from Pionersky and other districts to Novokoltsovsky. UrFU is considering launching shuttles to the scientific center. Another option is to have all schoolchildren live on the territory of the new scientific campus.
«In connection with the move, we have planned an increase in the dormitory»s housing stock,« explained Yulia Kazantseva. »Previously, only students from grades 9 to 11 lived in the dormitory; in the future, we plan to accept students starting from the 8th grade.«
We have already shown what the new SESC UrFU building looks like. The total area of the building is 24 thousand square meters (258,300 square feet), it is designed for 1,175 students, but initially there will be fewer.
— Will the number of admission places at SESC be increased?
— While the move is underway, we are starting with the same target admission numbers,« answered Yulia Kazantseva. »Later, we plan to increase admissions by 50 students for basic general education programs, meaning grades 8 and 9.
The building itself is shaped like a snowflake or a gear: blocks radiate from the central atrium — academic, sports, medical, and administrative zones, as well as a dining hall.
The main pride of the university lyceum is a multifunctional hall for 675 people, seamlessly integrated into the atrium. It has a rehearsal space, a storage room for props and decorations, a technical center, and a modern recording studio. If necessary, it can easily transform from a lecture hall, for example, into a ballroom, given that such a tradition exists.
The new SESC will also have more opportunities for sports — a separate aerobics hall, a gymnastics complex, tennis and basketball courts, a sports court, and even an emotional relief zone — just the thing for schoolchildren who are head over heels in their studies.
Previously, E1.RU journalists have visited:
in Gymnasium No. 9, which is located in the very center of Yekaterinburg;
in Lyceum No. 110, where they teach Chinese and prepare great mathematicians;
in Gymnasium No. 99 — the only resource center in the entire Ordzhonikidze district;
in Gymnasium No. 2, where film director Alexey Balabanov studied;
in the miniature Gymnasium No. 202 with a secret bomb shelter.
