Process for undergraduate admissions at UG gets tougher

Accra, March 8, GNA - Undergraduate applicants for admission into the University of Ghana (UG) for the 2011/2012 academic year would hav= e to acquire credit passes in the required subjects. Also Students who apply to the university must not only obtain credits in the required three core subjects, depending on what course they want to read, but also obtain a credit pass in the core subject that is not required.

Thus a student who wants to read a course in the Humanities, for instance, must obtain credits in core English, Mathematics and Social Studies, as well as Integrated Science, although it is not required in Humanities. Professor Kwesi Yankah, Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the UG, who revealed this in Accra on Tuesday, at a press briefing on undergraduate admissions, said the rule was to ensure that the university 93produced well-rounded students".

"The cut-off grade for a credit pass is C6. Anything below this is a mere pass and would not be accepted," he noted. He said because the WASSCE was not written last year, the university was revising its admissions processes, in order to fill the vacuum that had been created.

In line with this, they have made provisions for students writing the WASSCE in May/June 2011 to apply to the UG, pending the release of their results.

Final year Senior High School students will therefore have the opportunity to apply for the courses they want to read in the University before they write their WASSCE, whiles the results will be forwarded to the University by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC).

Prof. Yankah said this process would help to eliminate the incidence o= f faked results since they would get the results directly from WAEC and the one-year waiting period between the writing of the WASSCE and the time for University admissions would be avoided. Those who have the November/December WASSCE results can also apply but will have to fill in their results online. Also, the calculation of aggregates for admission has been altered in consultation with the National Commission on Tertiary Education (NCTE). Unlike the old method where the C4, C5 and C6 were all equated to 4 an= d D7 and D8 to 5, candidates can now calculate their aggregates by adding up the numbers written against the letters, (A1, B2, B3, C4, C5, C6, D7, E8 an= d F9). Therefore the cut-off aggregate would no longer be 24 but 36 due to th= e increased numbers.

Prof. Yankah said this mode of calculation would enable the university to determine which student got a better grade since C4, C5 and C6 would not all be counted as 4 and D7 and D8 as 5.

"This does not mean that those who get below C6 are bad students, it just means you cannot enter the UG. There are other tertiary institutions that they can use their WASSCE results to enter aside from universities,"= he said. Due to these revisions, the re-opening date for incoming students has been postponed from August to September 29, 2011 while that of continuing students is yet to be determined. Online applications would be activated from March to early May 2011. He said the facility for final year SHS students to apply, pending the release of their results, was available to other universities, to help them get the appropriate number of students for admissions, since those with Nov/Dec results constitute only about five per cent of the total number of students required. "The alternative would be to admit only about 500 students or to low= er the grade points in order to get more people and we do not want to do that,= " Prof. Yankah stated.