Photocred: Studentvillage
The University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) has revised its entrance policies for their faculty of health sciences, resulting in an intake of 60 percent black pupils from rural and low-quintile schools.
The university’s spokesperson, Vivienne Rowland, announced that the faculty has revised its admissions policy, resulting in a minimum 60 percent black student intake for the 2015 academic year.
In her statement, Rowland said that the remaining 40 percent of the places will be allocated to the top-performing applicants, based purely on their academic merit.
The 60 percent intake will be subdivided into three seperate categories. 20 percent of the spaces will go to the top performing black rural pupils, 20 percent will be available for the top black pupils from quintile one and two pupils and the remaining twenty will be available for the top performing black and coloured applicants.
In South Africa, the Government schools are divided into five quintiles, with quintile one being the poorest of the schools and quintile five being the wealthiest state schools.
In previous years, applicants were required to fill out a biographical questionnaire, which will not be required for the 2015 intake. Applicants will merely be judged based on their academic results and their National Benchmark Test scores, each of which will count an equal 50 percent. In future years, the biographical questionnaire may return and will have to be filled out online.
Vice Chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand drafted the proposal, along with a task team, consisting of members of the Wits Student Representative Council (SRC), the health sciences faculty at the university, a senior executive team, and members of various other faculties at the university.
“We will continue to research and review admissions policies in line with the realisation of this goal,” Rowland said. “Wits University is committed to being a demographically diverse and cosmopolitan world-class institution furthering the constitutional vision of a democratic and non-racial South Africa.”
