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At least 15,000 students who sat for the 2022 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) exam and qualified for university admission are yet to apply for placement to higher learning institutions.

Kenya Universities and Colleges Central Placement Service (KUCCPS) Chief Executive Officer, Dr Mercy Wahome says data so far indicates that 157,498 of the 173,127 students who attained a mean grade of C+ and above have applied for admission to degree courses.

However, 91 per cent of the students who qualified have so far applied for placement.

“Only 9 per cent of those who qualified for university admission have not submitted any application,” she said, in a statement.

Following the two revision phases that concluded recently, Wahome said some applicants failed to get any of the courses they listed due to competition as placement is done on merit.

“I have observed that a lot of students are still fixated with the traditional degree courses like Medicine, which cannot accommodate all the qualified students applying for them,” Wahome said.

According to Wahome, public universities provided only 523 slots in Medicine, Pharmacy and Nursing degree courses this year.

These and similar courses filled up quickly at the first phase of course selection, due to the large number of qualified students who applied for them.

Students who qualify for these programmes are those with mean grades ranging from A (plain) to B+ (plus).

In the 2022 examination, 1,156 candidates attained A, 6,658 scored A – (minus) and 15,938 got B+ thus, a total of 23,752 students scored these top grades.

“From the numbers, it is obvious that a student with A – (minus) or B+ is unlikely to get Medicine or any of the other competitive courses. However, this does not lock them from enrolling in these courses as Module II students,” explained Wahome.

She, however, said KUCCPS has given students the third and final chance to choose their universities and colleges courses afresh, following the reopening of the online application portal on Tuesday, which will also close tomorrow.

“The mistake that many of the top students do is applying for the traditional courses in universities where the cut-off trend for the programmes is too high, meaning the courses are very competitive, hence they miss,” she explained.

As the final selection phase gets underway, Wahome urged previous applicants to confirm if they have secured a course by checking if their student’s portal displays a message indicating they have secured a chance provisionally or not.

Any candidate who has secured a provisional placement is not required to reapply.

“Those who have secured courses should wait for KUCCPS to complete the placement process after which they will be provided with details of their courses and institutions, by September,” she stated.

The current revision of choices, which is the final application phase, also targets candidates who qualified for artisan certificate, craft certificate and diploma courses from the KCSE exams of 2022 to 2000.

She said they are also eligible to apply for courses in government technical and vocational education and training (TVET) institutions and teacher training colleges.