TOKYO - Another university admitted Wednesday to rigging entrance exams for its medical faculty in favor of children of its graduates, raising the total tally of Japanese medical schools found having manipulated their admission process to nine.

Nihon University said it favored a total of 18 applicants who are kin to graduates for the three years from 2016 when they were accepted under additional admission.

The university said there were other similar cases in 2015 or even before.

An official at the university said at a press conference that the university wanted to "secure applicants who will definitely enter our university" as it sees many not enrolling after passing the exam.

A number of improper practices in medical school admissions have been uncovered at Japanese universities since the education ministry launched a probe into 81 universities with a medical faculty in August. Tokyo Medical University was the first to have been found discriminating against female applicants.

Eight universities have already revealed misconduct on their own and St. Marianna University School of Medicine said Wednesday that while it is under the ministry's probe it has not committed any misconduct.

The ministry plans to release its final report of the probe by the end of this year.

In its midterm report, the ministry gave several examples of misconduct, including a bias against female applicants and applicants who have failed the exams many times in the past, as well as the padding of scores of applicants who are children of alumni.

Other instances of misconduct include the padding scores of first-time exam takers and not adhering to the order of scores when accepting applicants on a waiting-list.

The eight universities to already admit to misconduct include Tokyo Medical University and Juntendo University, which both discriminated against women, and Showa University and Fukuoka University, which both discriminated against individuals who had failed past exams.

The four remaining universities are Kobe University, Iwate Medical University, Kanazawa Medical University and Kitasato University.

==Kyodo