There was a scramble for the 2020 Kenya Certificate of Secondary Education (KCSE) examination top performing candidates for placement in universities.

According to data from Kenya Universities and College Central Placement Service (Kuccps), University of Nairobi took the lion’s share of the total number of candidates who scored A plain and will be expected to receive 360 of the 893 best candidates in the 2020 KCSE exam results.

Of the 893 A-scorers, 889 were placed in 21 public and private universities. Three opted for Technical and Vocational Education and Training programmes.

The second university with a high number of placement for A learners was Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology (Jkuat) with 175 students.

Kuccps chief executive Mercy Wahome said the 2021/22 university and college placement report is the seventh placement cycle since its establishment and that they are working on improving systems and processes to enhance efficiency, equity and transparency of the exercise.

“Of great concern is the low number of schools that assist their candidates to apply for universities and colleges.

We appeal to parents and teachers to help us in supporting KCSE candidates to choose careers at school,” said Dr Wahome.

Four choices

She cited mistakes that students make while choosing courses in universities, which included applying for one competitive programme in all the four choices provided and in a competitive university.

We encourage students to look beyond our border in areas such as ICT, Agriculture, Technology and other 21^st Century careers.

Others choose without considering subject requirement, they go for traditional courses like medicine and engineering,” she said.

The third institution with a high number of A students was Kenyatta University (113), Moi (71), followed by Egerton (49), Maseno (22) and Mt Kenya University and Kenya Methodist with 13 students each.

This means Mt Kenya and Kenya Methodist received the highest number of best performing students among private universities.

Mt Kenya University founder, Dr Simon Gicharu, welcomed the placement attributing the success to introduction of marketable courses over time.

“We offer competitive courses in the university, which gives students various options to choose from like medical and technical courses,” said Gicharu.

Masinde Muliro and Dedan Kimathi University of Technology got nine  A-scorers, eight other students were placed to Kisii and Uzima universities each while Kabarak has five .

Degree programme

Some 118,822 students were competitively placed in universities for degree programmes.

Kenyatta took the lion’s share of candidates with 6,733 placed to the institution out of an approved total capacity of 6,894.

A total of 142,540 students with mean grade of C+ and above were eligible for placement to universities and colleges.

Some 128,073 students placed into degree programmes (89.85 per cent) while 6,617 into TVET programmes (4.64 per cent). A total of 7,850 students did not apply (5.51 per cent).