The university sets policy guidelines for admitting applicants wishing to join its academic programmes leading to the following awards: certificates, ordinary, advanced, and postgraduate diplomas, undergraduate, master's, and doctoral degrees. The major purpose of such guidelines is to set basic quality standards for entrance into academic programmes as a prerequisite of the university’s Quality Assurance Policy.

There are two categories of minimum academic standards: general and specific. The general standards cover all programmes that do not have certain prerequisites for admissions, and therefore, their minimum requirements are well spelt out in accredited curriculum. For academic programmes with specific requirements, in addition to the curriculum minimums, these are also clearly spelt out and should be fulfilled before any student admission can take place.

International applicants whose education systems in their mother countries differ from that of Uganda, MUST first have their documents equated to Ugandan standards by the Uganda National Examinations Board (UNEB) or Uganda National Council for Higher Education (UNCHE). It is the applicant's responsibility to submit admissible documents. It should be noted that EQUSaT does not apply a weighting system during the admissions exercise. All subjects taken at the Advanced level of Education or the equivalent or through the pre-university Higher Education Access Programme may be considered as essential, relevant, desirable or otherwise depending on the academic programme.

The university considers the minimum standards of: 3 passes for a certificate, one principal pass and 2 subsidiary passes for a diploma, and two principal passes at an ‘A’ level for a degree. There might be programme-specific criteria and therefore applicants are advised to seek guidance from the office of the Academic Registrar.