A third stimulus was the changes in the criteria for University examinations in the early 1970s. The government decided that they wanted to standardize the university admission criteria, based on the language the entrance exams were taken in. It was noted that students who took the exams in Tamil scored better than the students who took it in Sinhala. Thus the government decided that Tamil students had to achieve a higher score than the students who took the exam in Sinhala to enter the universities. As a result, the number of Tamil students entering universities fell.