Varsity Admission Based On Merit No Loopholes In System Mohe

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Amid criticism after a top-scoring STPM student failed to receive a course of his choice, the Higher Education Ministry stressed that the admission process for students to public universities is based on the principles of meritocracy.
Its director-general, Azlinda Azman, also rejected allegations of loopholes in the UPUOnline system.
“Student admissions to institutions are made by arranging qualified candidates according to the highest merits to the lowest,” Bernama reported her as saying at a press conference today.
She also assured that all students who obtained a Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) of 4.00 for their STPM examinations or their equivalent and applied to public universities were offered seats.
On the STPM student who complained to an MP about being unable to secure a seat, she said that checks revealed the candidate only applied for the accounting programme at four universities - Universiti Malaya (UM), Universiti Putra Malaysia, Universiti Utara Malaysia and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.
Azlinda added that the candidate in question was offered his fifth choice - bachelor’s degree in Management with Honours at a renowned research university, after the selection process was generated by the system.
“Even though they obtained a CGPA of 4.00 with a merit of 99.90 percent, their application ranking in the accounting programme was far behind other candidates who had a merit of 100 percent.
“For instance, UM had 2,291 qualified applications, with 1,127 of them having full merit.
“The candidate was in the 1,129th position, while there were only 85 seats available,” Azlinda added.
Disappointed
Yesterday, Edward Wong, who scored a 4.0 CGPA in the STPM examination, expressed disappointment after six universities rejected his applications to join the accounting course.
Wong revealed that management was only his fifth choice, which he described as “neither my passion, nor my dream, nor the reward for my two years of struggle”.
STPM student Edward WongHe took to Facebook to share his story, which prompted MCA president Wee Ka Siong to hold a press conference on the matter.
“He scored a CGPA of 4.0. His co-curricular participation is 9.9/10. Yet he failed to get a place in accounting.
“Wong took Accounting, Economics, General Studies, and ICT, scoring an A in all. Unfortunately, however, he was not accepted to pursue accounting at the public universities he applied to,” Wee added.
Technical issue with Muet
Azlinda further said that out of 109,866 qualified applications, 78,883 students, or 71.8 percent, were successfully offered seats in bachelor's degree programmes for the 2025/2026 session.
Out of the 1,255 STPM candidates with a CGPA of 4.00, 1,249 candidates were offered seats while six are still in the confirmation process due to a technical issue related to the Malaysian University English Test (Muet) results, she shared.
“Four out of six candidates have been contacted and action has been taken to process their offers, while we are still trying to reach the remaining two,” she added.
On complaints that there were graduates of diploma programmes and their equivalent with CGPA 3.99 being unable to secure seats, she explained that there were several factors that resulted in failure.
This includes selecting courses incompatible with their diploma courses, not fulfilling special programme conditions and incomplete application documents.
“Candidates are advised to make full use of the appeal period from Sept 5 to 14,” Azlinda said. - Mkini

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