GPA not only criteria: Czuba

DEPARTMENT of Higher Education, Research, Science and Technology Secretary Fr Jan Czuba said the grade point average (GPA) is not the only requirement considered in programme selection ranking.
He said selectors at higher learning institutions used complex ranking order.
“Thus, some students with good GPA could not be selected,” he said.
“All additional criteria which higher institutions used were available to students. For each student, we created an email address and password so they could check if they were selected.
“Those email addresses and passwords will be active until the end of March so students would know if higher institutions selected them from the admission pool.
“This is the first time that students and parents have a transparent system for selection and enrolment.
There have been concerns raised by parents regarding non-selection of their children by the online selection system despite them getting reasonable grades.
Some parents claimed their children scored GPA of 3 and above but were still left out by the system.
Henry Yamo, a parent whose child scored a GPA of 3.2 but missed out on all her five choices, said many things did not work out well right from the beginning when students were asked to complete online forms. He said the online form was not user friendly for new students.
He said the form did not indicate errors and when saved with errors, all information in the form was erased.
The process had to be repeated until it was filled correctly. Only students with lots of data could afford such practice, the parent said.
He said students were advised through a press release by Czuba that in the event a student not accepting his/her admission offered, the application may be considered from the admission pool.
“My daughter, after logging into the online system, noted that there were no options on the platform for students to reject the offer to enable the system to pick that information and allow her name to be in the admission pool,” Yamo said.
“Without such a mechanism, she is wondering whether to contact the institution that gave her an admission offer or DHEST to make her intention known.
“This is quite confusing and frustrating for both students and parents. Also the admission offer was from an institution she never applied for.
“My daughter missed out on all her five choices although she scored a GPA of 3 and above. This brings to question the process being used and I suspect that the process may be considering only first choices which is very unfair for students with high GPAs.
“Once a student is not considered in his/her first choice he/she also misses the other choices and is dropped right to the bottom and may be picked up by institutions that he/she did not apply for.
“So where is the transparency?
“I call on the DHEST to explain the selection logic and process and display the GPAs of selected students against their candidate numbers so parents can know why their child was chosen or not.”

• Czuba clarifies selection system.