Good news for top KCSE performers of 2016

 Joyce Kibugi, Alliance Girls PHOTO:COURTESY

Some of the students who scored strong A- grades in last year’s Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exams have a chance to study medicine in university.

They have benefited from the strict supervision of last year’s national exams that eliminated cheating that previously allowed anyone who posted impressive As to crowd the rest out.

The Standard established that for the first time, some students who scored a strong A- have been placed in two public universities to study medicine.

“In the past, even students with a plain A never got the opportunity to study medicine. And nobody with A- was admitted for medicine, but this year we have them,” said an official familiar with placements done by the Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS).

Some 141 students who scored straight As are smiling as they wait to start pursuing their dream courses.

In addition, thousands who attained the minimum university entry requirement of C+ and who secured admission to public universities under Government sponsorship have been selected to pursue art programmes such as Bachelor of Arts and education.

An analysis of the courses chosen by the country’s top brains who scored As in the 2016 KCSE exams reveals that 73 of them were allocated medicine and surgery.

The top student – Kibugi Joyce Wambu – who scored an A of 83 points, will be admitted to the University of Nairobi to study medicine.

Maina Bernard Mwangi, who was the second best student nationally, chose to study computer science at Jomo Kenyatta University of Science and Technology (JKUAT).

Overall, medicine, pharmacy, engineering, architecture and economics are the most preferred courses by the top candidates. And of the top A scorers, 102 will join University of Nairobi as JKUAT takes in 28. Moi University and Kenyatta University will each admit seven of the top A students.

A total of 4,645 students scored A- while another 10,975 scored B+ and 17,216 posted B.

The KUCCPS Chief Executive Officer, John Muraguri, said the cut-off point for this year was no different from last year.

PLACEMENT DATA

Speaking during the release of the placement data, Mr Muraguri said despite the performance in the 2016 examinations, the cluster weights were no different from the past.

This means that this year, students got genuine courses based on the competitive examinations. However, this year’s placement was unique because there will be no students left for public universities to pick for the parallel programmes.

Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i asked university managers to review the academic programmes to meet individual, societal, national and global needs.

All the 88,626 students who scored C+ and above were placed in public and private universities.

The 35 public universities were allocated 71,089 students while the 28 private institutions will absorb a record 17,368.

Students can access the courses allocated and university they have been placed in through the KUCCPS portal (kuccps.ac.ke) using their index number as the user name, and their name and birth certificate number as the password.