Admissions booklet to apply for universities out on Sept 15

by Manjula Fernando

The University Grants Commission (UGC) will release the admissions booklet for students who qualified at the GCE Advanced Level exam to apply for universities on September 15.

This will mark the beginning of their accelerated programme to admit students to universities starting December, a plan put in place after the Education Ministry's decision to reschedule the AL exam from April to June to benefit candidates in tsunami hit areas.

"Students will have to send their applications within three weeks from September 15," UGC Vice Chairman Prof. L. Ratnayake said.

The Examinations Department released the 2005 GCE Advanced level results on Wednesday, a day before schedule to make way for the UGC to commence the admission process on time.

Prof. Ratnayake said they have informed all universities to complete admissions by March 31 next year. The Jaffna University has already informed that they will commence all their programmes on December 27. The Vice Chairman said the UGC has planned to release the Z-score cut off marks on December 20."

The UGC will admit 1050 students for Engineering and 930 for Medicine this year while the Moratuwa University will select an additional 100 students for Information Technology, a course in demand. The Colombo and Jaffna Universities will take a selected group of 150 students from all four study streams (including Arts and Commerce) for their ICT course. Another 120 will be admitted for Computer Science by the Colombo University.

According to results released by the Department on Wednesday, 116,506 candidates (who obtained three simple passes and an average of 30 marks for the Common General Paper) have qualified to apply for universities this year. This includes 101,092 school and 15,414 private candidates.

Examinations Commissioner Anura Edirisinghe said 5000 more students have qualified for university in this year's exam than last year. A total of 2,910 school and 258 private candidates have scored three A's.

A total of 245,703 applied to sit for the examination in June although only 204,030 turned up.

Four students from Royal College, Colombo, Hindu College, Jaffna, Mahinda Vidyalaya, Galle and Mahamaya Balika Vidyalaya, Kandy scored the Island's best results in the four streams at the GCE advanced Level examination in June 2005.