About 40 percent of medical school students across the nation have submitted leave of absence requests in protest of the government’s plan to increase the medical school admissions quota.

The education ministry said on Monday that an inspection of 40 medical schools nationwide from Friday to Sunday found that 777 students had filed for a leave of absence, creating a cumulative total of seven-thousand-594. 

That’s 40-point-four percent of the 18-thousand-793 medical students in the country as of April last year. 

The latest figure only includes applications that followed due procedures such as approval from parents and a signature from the head of the department. 

Until last month, the ministry’s tally had included admissions that did not follow due procedures, which raised the total number of students who filed for a leave of absence to about 13-thousand-700. But those submissions were excluded from the tally starting this month.