Varsity course revision deadline closes today

Some 36,522 students who scored C+ or above, but failed to secure a degree programme of their choice have until today to revise their courses.

Another 6,654 of the candidates who scored at least a C+ but did not submit any application also have till end of today to pick fresh courses.

Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) issued a two-day extension that lapse today.

KUCCPS opened the portal for students to undertake courses second revision starting April 2 to April 15.

KUCCPS chief executive John Muraguri had said the extension was to give chance to students to complete the process.

“This is to enable any applicant who may have experienced hitches in the last days of the application to complete the process,” said Mr Muraguri.

For this year’s admissions, some 125,448 candidates qualified for placement to degree programmes following the release of the 2019 KCSE examinations results. Of these, 118,794 had submitted applications for placement by the close of the first revision of choices last month, and 82,169 (65.5 per cent) have been provisionally placed to one of their choices.

It emerged some students were unable to complete the revision process citing poor connectivity to the portal. Muraguri said the connectivity issue had been resolved.

The development comes as KUCCPS emphasised that some of the avoidable mistakes students made during application cost them their dream courses.

Analysis of placement mistakes done by students over the years indicated some selected courses but failed to complete the application process. 

Muraguri said KUCCPS had received inquiries from applicants who selected courses and put them in the “course basket” – a tool in the application portal for setting aside desired courses – but failed to actually apply.

It also emerged that in some cases, candidates submitted only one choice, instead of the maximum four.  “This means that once they missed that one course, there was always nothing more to fall back on. Applicants should ensure they fill in all the choices when applying for placement,” said Muraguri.

Students have a total 18 choices open to them when making applications. Of these are six options for degree, four for diploma and a similar number for craft certificates. Another four options are available for artisan certificate courses.

Another common mistake during application is top performers only going for the most competitive degree programmes, which Muraguri said always had limited capacities.

Still, during applications, some candidates assume because they scored high grades, they satisfied all requirements for a course. 

Muraguri said students also failed to take into account the relative performance of candidates during their year, when comparing their cluster weights with previous cut-off points.